


this is a long drive (for three robins who don't agree on much)

by happyrobins



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Civilian AU, Gen, road trip au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 14:33:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1553801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/happyrobins/pseuds/happyrobins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Bad Robins road trip AU!) Steph’s trip home to Gotham takes a huge detour thanks to Jason and Damian’s conflicts with airport security. She’s stuck driving the two brothers cross-country to reach Tim’s wedding in time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Steph starts her spring break on a sunny Friday morning—a whole day early—and, as things stand, there are only a couple of detours between her and home.

The fresh start had been a welcome change. She transferred from Gotham U and went out of state, way out, all the way to the opposite coast. Expanding her horizons, putting what’s passed in the past, meeting new people and all that jazz.

And it’s been great, living where the sun decides to show its face once in a while, and where she doesn’t need to keep a knife in her purse when she goes to the grocery store in the middle of the day. But she thinks she’ll always be drawn back to Gotham, in a way only other born-and-bred Gothamites could understand.

Her usual study buddies sure didn’t understand, to the point of being worried for her life when she talked about how excited she is to return to such an infamously dangerous, crime-infested city such as Gotham. And they seemed just as worried about the fact that she’s so excited to go home for her ex-boyfriend (but-now-just-good-friend)’s wedding.

She is excited, though. Really excited, for the rehearsal dinners and the parties and the groom-teasing. It’ll be good to see the Wayne kids again. Especially Cass, who’s been in Hong Kong the past few months and difficult to get ahold of. And Tim, the groom-to-be, who, judging by his texts, is suffering daily freakouts from stressing over venue problems and the guest list and how to rearrange the seating plan now that Tam’s second-cousins from out-of-country have changed their minds and decided to attend. The last time Steph heard from Tim his problem du jour was centered around the upcoming rehearsal dinner. She understands his anxiety—when the entire family gets together for an event, things have a tendency to get out-of-hand. Destructively so.

As long as the wedding doesn’t end up like Cass’s twenty-first birthday a few years back, when Cass lost control of her new motorcycle and nearly ran over Tim and the mayor of Gotham before crashing into the marble fountain. Or like that New Year’s banquet even further back when Damian made a little girl cry, causing her older brother to come to her defence, and when Dick tried to intervene he got pushed by the other teen and toppled over a loaded buffet table, throwing shrimp everywhere.

None of that will happen, of course. At least not again.

It’ll probably be something worse.

For now, Steph relishes this short moment of peace and satisfaction. It’s spring break. She’s got four midterm papers behind her, sipping a overly expensive and ridiculously sugary iced coffee smothered in whipped cream, wearing clean clothes instead of the smelly pyjamas she’s been living in lately, and soon she’ll be flying first-class across the country for what she’s sure will be the most lavish wedding she’ll ever see. Livin’ the glam life.

She wishes she could bottle up and save the feeling because chances are all of it’s going straight down the drain once she gets a certain Damian Wayne-al Ghul, twelve-year-old patience-tester extraordinaire, in her car.

Finding the house is easier than she thought it’d be, minus the part where she took a wrong turn in the expensive, sprawling neighbourhood because she was craning her neck and squinting to see if that man walking his dog was the celebrity she  _thought_  he was. She just drives uphill, to the most impressive house behind the largest set of gates, and she knows she’s there.

She smiles at the cameras and gets buzzed in at the gate. As she goes slowly up the long driveway, she tries to keep her eyes ahead but there’s so much to look at. Fountains and lush trees and extravagant gardens in full bloom. Part of her worries some exotic animals, like peacocks, will burst out of the decorative shrubbery and run in front of her tires.

Though she’s been to Wayne Manor countless times, she’s never been to one of the al Ghul houses. It’s not as big as the Manor, but it’s jaw-droppingly gorgeous, all smooth stone and pillars, and probably worth just as much, if not more.

…and this is just one of the al Ghuls’ many homes scattered around the globe, she reminds herself, awed.

Steph honks her car horn as she gets closer to the mansion and sees the boy in the green hooded sweatshirt sitting on the wide stone steps, backpack and suitcase ready and waiting beside him.

No matter how many times she honks and waves at him, he doesn’t look up from the cell phone in his hands. He outright ignores her until she’s standing right in front of him.

“You’re only fourteen minutes late,” he says, giving her only a cursory glance before returning his focus to his phone, typing away. He seems displeased to see her, but he’s waiting for her here, outside, so that’s got to prove a little eagerness. “An improvement.”

"I aim to please."

"And, as always, miss the mark,” he retorts as he stands and slings his backpack over his shoulder, and Steph grins despite herself. Yep, she’s definitely missed the little brat.

She spreads her arms. “How about a hug? It’s been forever since I’ve seen you, Damian.”

Thinking back, it’s been since last summer when she and him were both back in Gotham. Nearly a year already, and it shows in how much he’s grown. He’s gained a few inches and crossed that line from grumpy kid to angry almost-teenager. Lost some of the baby fat in his face that made his scowls look so cute and chubby-cheeked, which makes Steph a bit sad. His short, bristly hair seems to have gotten longer—his head is mostly hidden under the hood of his sweater, but she can see strands of spiky bangs against his forehead.

He suffers through her hug, standing stiff as a board and continuing to scroll through a feed on his phone as he waits for her to release him. It’s still one of the better hugs she’s gotten out of him—when he was younger he used to squirm and  _scratch_.

As soon as she starts to let go he twists out of her arms and walks briskly to the car, leaving his suitcase sitting on the steps.

“Umm,” Steph begins. She might be driving him to the airport but she’s not his _chauffeur_. He doesn’t turn back, so, sighing, she picks it up and carries it to the car herself. The suitcase isn’t very heavy. He’s a lighter packer than her, that’s for sure. Must be used to traveling from all the times he’s bounced back-and-forth between his parents and tagged along with them on trips across the world.

“This is your car?” Damian asks, lips curling into a sneer as his sharp eyes find every small dent and patch of rust, and Steph’s  _hurt_.

She’s used to him viciously insulting her, and her intelligence, and her clothes, and her life choices, but her  _car_? That’s crossing a line. She adores her car. Sure, it’s old—very old, built before she was born—and it’s seen some wear and tear, but it’s definitely had some major refurbishment done to it by a past owner or two, and it runs fine. It’s never let her down so far.

And how lucky was she to find a car in her favourite shade of purple at her price range?

“How old is this monstrosity?” Damian delivers a small kick to a rear tire, as though testing to see if the vehicle will fall apart at a touch. “You own an impressive piece of history, Brown—one of the innovative breakthroughs of steam technology.”

“Yes, Damian, it totally runs on a steam engine,” Steph deadpans, slamming the trunk shut. “Tweet tweet, all aboard!”

Steph slides into the drivers seat, and Damian, instead of sitting up front with her, crawls into the backseat and buckles up there, where he can easily ignore her. He cranks up the volume on his phone—she can hear the tinny music from his blaring earbuds, can almost make out the lyrics.

 _Ah, so that’s how it’s going to be_ , she thinks, shifting into drive.

At a red light, Steph glances around at the boy in the backseat. His arms are crossed stubbornly as he gazes out the window, a frown cemented on his face.

"Damian…" She reaches back and waves her hand in front of his face for his attention. "Damian!"

She can almost feel his glare piercing the back of her seat, and the faint, thumping beat of his music disappears when he hits pause.

"What?"

"I just want to know what’s got you so moody today. Should I chalk it up to hormones, or is something wrong? C’mon, you can tell me."

“I told Mother I don’t require a babysitter on this trip,” he says irritably, after a stubborn, silent pause. “I’m not a child. I can travel by myself.”

“Hey, I’m not trying to babysit,” Steph says, throwing him a reassuring smile as she shoulder-checks to switch lanes. “We’re both headed to Gotham, we might as well look out for each other, you know? Your parents just want to make sure everything goes smoothly.”

An unconvinced  _-tt-_  comes from the backseat. He doesn’t buy it.

“So how’s school been treating you?” asks Steph, trying to keep the conversation rolling. “Are you on spring break right now, is that why you’re back in the country?”

"I don’t go to school. I have private tutors."

“I thought your mom was making you go to that fancy private school near London?”

“That was last year.”

“Oh.” Steph remembers something Tim mentioned a while back. “Right, didn’t you get expelled?”

"Mother withdrew me because the headmaster was a brainless plebeian deluded enough to think himself worthy of respect."

"Okay then."

"Everything I said to him was completely warranted."

"Okay."

Maybe conversation isn’t the best idea. But she keeps trying, determined to get through to him. He answers her questions with terse replies and dismissive grunts that really remind her of his dad. She manages to learn that he’s been traveling with his mother the past few months, and that Talia had business here this week but left two days ago for a sudden business crisis in Rome, leaving Damian behind so he wouldn’t miss the wedding. He doesn’t seem terribly excited about it.

Steph’s plan is working—the forced conversation has Damian frustrated, distracted enough that he doesn’t notice the first wrong turn she takes. But Damian’s a perceptive kid, and he sure doesn’t miss the second one.

“Are you  _lost_ , Brown?” he asks snidely. He unbuckles his seatbelt and slides into the front seat. “Our flight leaves in an hour, in case you’ve forgotten. Turn around—we don’t have time for this idiotic bumbling.”

“We’re not exactly headed to the airport. At least, not this airport. First we’ve got to make a little stop over in Star City.”

“ _Why_ —”

“Because,” she interrupts, “according to Roy Harper, that’s where Jason is right now.”

He fixes Steph with a glare that probably makes his parents bend to his wishes, but it doesn’t work on her. “This constitutes kidnapping. That is a felony, Brown.”

"Oh, hush. It’s not kidnapping. Your dad knows about it. Sorta. Well,  _Dick_  knows about it. It was mostly his idea. Don’t worry, we’re still headed to Gotham. It’s just a tiny detour. We’re going to pick up Jason, and then the three of us are going to fly first-class to Gotham from Star City this afternoon. It’s all been arranged.”

Damian looks like he wants to scream abuse at her. Like he has a thousand stinging insults for her but he simply doesn’t know where to start. This is the closest she’s ever gotten him to speechless—she considers it a victory.

"Just sit back and enjoy the ride,” Steph says breezily. “We can stop for lunch later, get ice cream… I’ll even let you pick the radio station."

He’s stopped listening to her. His earbuds are on full blast again as he texts angrily, jabbing at the buttons with more force than necessary. Already expressing his outrage to Dick, probably.

She knows she and Damian are thinking the exact same thing: with company like this, the hours are going to crawl by.

—

 

_GRAYSON. STOP IGNORING ME._

_I can see that you’ve read my messages._

_This entire situation is your fault. I demand you explain yourself._

  
  


_sorry!!! helping alfred boss around the caterers so can’t rly talk. I’m supposed to make sure we have enough silverware._

_and alf’s showing them the “right” way to make shrimp puffs and I’m taste-tester lol_

  
  


_I hope you choke._

  
  


_don’t be mad damian! D: you’ll be here soon! I’ll save you some puffs I promise_

  
  


_This is betrayal, Grayson. You went behind my back to make this happen. Thanks to you I’m going to be stuck on a plane with Brown AND Todd, and you didn’t give me so much as the courtesy of a warning._

  
  


_it was just really sudden!! but why don’t you try talking to steph? brag about those awards your paintings won_

  


_Why don’t you stab yourself in the throat with a salad fork?_

  


_just please be good, lil d?? I’ll buy you that video game with the swords and the bloody limbs flying everywhere_

  


_Mother bought it for me last week._

  


_I’ll play it with you for HOURS. I’ll let you behead me and desecrate my corpse as many times as you want, k?_

  


_I still hate you._

  


_< 3_

—

 

Damian doesn’t say a word for the next few hours, except to mutter what he wanted Steph to order him for lunch at the drive-thru. Other than that, he ignores her entirely—just a gloomy little raincloud in her front passenger seat, giving her the silent treatment and glued to his cell phone.

He doesn’t try to push her out of the moving car and take the steering wheel himself, or make any other attempt to murder her, so that’s nice. It’s really the most peaceable amount of time they’ve spent together, that she can remember.

Miles tick by on the odometer as they drive down an endless stretch of highway. Steph loses count of Volkswagen Beetles after the second hour. She changes the radio station every ten minutes out of sheer boredom. Then, finally,  _finally_ , she sees the Star City turnoff. The worst is over. She can almost smell the grey smog and damp streets of her hometown already.

She pulls up in front of Roy’s house, parking on the street and waiting. He’s supposed to be watching for her car. A couple minutes go by and nothing happens. She double-checks the address and sends a text.

After a few more minutes she honks the horn. After that she goes and rings the doorbell. Nobody’s home.

It was supposed to be quick—shove Jason in the car and  _drive_.

Finally, Steph gets a new text from Roy. Change of plans. Anxiously checking the time, she sighs and pulls back into traffic. If they’re to make their flight they can’t afford any more surprises. Jason better cooperate, because she really doesn’t want to have to resort to Plan B. It isn’t pretty.

Roy’s directions lead her to a park in the next neighborhood. “Target sighted,” she says, spotting Jason sitting on a bench with a tall, redheaded woman, watching Roy push his daughter on a swing. “Let’s move out, Damian. Mission time.”

Damian gives a - _tt-_ , but unbuckles his seatbelt and follows.

Jason’s sitting perched up on the backrest of the bench, his battered workboots resting on the seat, smoking a cigarette. Steph recognizes the woman he’s talking to—that supermodel, Kory Anders. The one Dick was dating for so long.

Jason’s chuckling at something she said. The smile drops into a scowl the second he sees Steph and Damian walking up.

“No.” He stands up, drops his cigarette butt on the ground and grinds it out with his heel, and crosses his arms. “There is no way I’m—”

Kory places a hand on his shoulder. “Jason—”

“I said  _no_. I told you guys I’m not going anywhere near that shitstorm. Why do you think I’ve been avoiding Gotham?”

“Jason, we’ve got less than an hour to catch the plane,” says Steph. “We don’t have time to argue. Just come with us.  _Please_.”

“Sorry, can’t go.” Jason says, shrugging carelessly. “I don’t have my bag. Too bad.”

"I’ve got all your stuff in my car.” says Roy. Just a tiny bit smug. “Kory packed it during lunch."

"Screw you. This is cold-hearted betrayal, Harper. Anders." He glowers at both of them in turn. "I told you I wasn’t going to the wedding. I  _trusted_  you to help me lie low until it blew over.”

"Well, maybe I got a little sick of you swearing around my daughter."

"I’m sorry!" Jason snaps irritably. "I’m trying not to, I’m just so fu— I mean… hecking—?" He looks at Roy questioningly, to check if that’s any better. Roy rolls his eyes.

"Yeah, I get it. The wedding stuff has you in a bad mood and frankly, you’re a pain in the ass to be around right now. At least go to Gotham and aim it at the right people."

"Jason, this is a very important ceremony—a celebration of family and love,” says Kory. “I think it will be good for you to attend, surely your family will be happy to see you. It cannot be as bad as you are assuming."

"Yes. Yes it can,” Jason says dully. “Bad and worse. At best there’ll be just some bloodshed. At worst there’ll be  _fire_. And I’m actually being optimistic here, because explosions are more probable than you’d think—”

“Jason…” Kory takes his hands in hers and smiles at him imploringly. Her eyes are big and green and infectiously cheerful.

"Crap, you’re doing… that  _thing_ ,” Jason grumbles. “With the eyes. Cut it out.” She smiles wider and Jason almost gives in. Almost. But then he shakes his head and yanks his hands away. “Look, I’d be okay with just heading over with you and Roy the day of and popping in for a couple hours. That’d be… tolerable. But the shit they want me to do?” He waves a hand angrily at Steph, who knows she’s currently playing the part of stand-in for the rest of his family. “Being part of the rehearsals and the wedding party and— and putting on a suit and smiling for the cameras? Nope. Over my dead body.”

“That can be arranged,” Damian says.

“Squirt, you should be on my side. I know you don’t want to be a part of that disaster either. Back me up and we can go to Disneyland or something instead.”

"Todd, get in the car," he demands impatiently, unswayed. "I will not miss my flight due to your childishness. I want to get this over with, the sooner the better."

“One way or another, we’re taking you to Gotham,” insists Steph. “It’d be really nice if you cooperated so we don’t have to like, tie you up and shove you in my trunk.”

Jason snorts. “You won’t.”

“We don’t want to, but, y’know… desperate times…” Really, it’s the four of them against Jason, and Steph has no doubt that Kory herself could probably take him down—she’s got a good few inches on him.

He must realize he’s beat, no way out, because he heaves a long, annoyed sigh, shoves his hands in his pockets, and trudges off in the direction of Steph’s car. A stray soccer ball rolls across his path and he vents by viciously kicking it across the field, back towards the kids it belongs to.

“Bye, Lian!” he calls over his shoulder. “I’ll see you at the wedding. Oh, and your dad’s a big meanie so give him a hard time for me, okay? Raise some serious heck.”

 

—

 

Jason stops dead in his tracks when he sees Steph’s car. He stops and laughs. “I can’t believe it. You have a Pinto?”

“What’s wrong with it?” she asks defensively. First Damian insults her car, now this?

“Seriously? You own one and you don’t know? They’re infamous for catching fire on rear-end collisions. A problem with the fuel tank design—it was a huge deal back in the day. And by that, I mean way before we were born. This thing’s ancient.“ He squints at it appraisingly and pats the hood of the car like he’s patting a dog. “And it’s just a really ugly car. Nice colour though. I like the purple.”

“It’s eggplant,” Steph huffs. “And the woman I bought it from said it was perfectly safe. She’d been driving it for years and nothing happened.” And Steph trusted her—they were kindred spirits. The woman had to have been at least seventy and she was selling the car to buy a motorcycle. Plus, she was the one responsible for the purple paint job. Definitely a kindred spirit.

Jason kicks the rear fender  _hard_ , with loud metal thunk.

“Hey!” Steph exclaims angrily, kneeling down and checking for a dent. “Stop hurting my car!”

“Just checking,” Jason says breezily, opening the passenger side door and taking a seat. “Guess you were right—seems fine.”

“I’m not getting in that,” states Damian, now eyeing the vehicle warily. “It’s unsafe. Defective.”

“There is nothing wrong with my car,” Steph insists. “Jason, tell him you were making that up. Tell him that it’s fine.”

Jason scratches his chin, thoughtful. “Well, yeah, the story was definitely blown a bit out of proportion. But you never know…” he finishes ominously.

“You rode in it all the way here and nothing happened, remember?” Steph reminds Damian, pushing him by the shoulder towards the car. “Besides, it’s just a short drive to the airport. Then you’ll never have to get in it again, I promise.”

“If I die, my parents will see you put in jail for the rest of your life,” Damian warns darkly, finally getting in the backseat and buckling his seatbelt.

Steph rolls her eyes as she shifts out of park. Right now a nice, quiet solitary cell doesn’t sound so bad.

 

—

 

“What is taking so long?” Damian snaps when Steph finally gets back from the ticket check-in desk. The airport is packed with spring breakers and it takes a lot of weaving between the crowd of people and suitcases just for Steph to reach where the boys are sitting, where they’ve been waiting with the luggage while she was trying to sort things out with the ticket people.

“They won’t let us fly,” she says quietly, clutching their tickets tightly in her fist. She’s still stunned.

His brow wrinkles in confusion. “Why not?”

“Good question—I’m not really sure,” she says through gritted teeth, whirling on Jason. He looks at her questioningly, taking a long, ice-rattling sip of the soda he bought while she was nearly tearing her hair out dealing with a bunch of stubborn, rude, tight-lipped airport officials, and that just makes her angrier. “Why don’t  _you_  tell us what the problem is, Jason?”

“Yeah… forgot to mention…” He winces apologetically, and she knows it’s an act. He’s not sorry. He knew this was going to happen. “I had a little… trouble last time I was at an airport. Mostly Roy’s fault, though. Actually, it was all his fault. It had to do with this, uh,  _gun_  I had. It ended up becoming this huge deal. We were  _this_  close to getting arrested. Barbara was supposed to smooth things over for me, adjust my records to make it like it never happened, but I guess she hasn’t had a chance yet. She’s been really busy. Until that gets fixed, I’m pretty sure no airport’s gonna let me fly.”

“Oh my  _god_ ,” says Steph, dropping into the chair next to them and pressing her palms against her forehead. She can’t believe this. It’s even worse than she thought. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“Like I said, I thought Barbara dealt with it.”

“Leave him behind,” Damian decrees. “This was a idiotic idea—we would have arrived in Gotham  _hours_  ago if you weren’t so intent on dragging him along. I refuse to be stuck in an airport for hours  _more_  waiting for another flight just because Todd’s a delinquent and you’re delusional.”

"Yes!" Jason agrees emphatically, throwing his arms up in the air. "Leave me behind! _Please_. I vote for the squirt’s plan.”

Steph ignores him. Both of them. “I’m going to go talk to the ticket people again.” She stands up and straightens the hem of her shirt, preparing for battle. She even puts on her war face. “There has to be  _something_  I can do to convince them to let us on the plane.”

“Good luck with that,” Jason tells her, taking another sip of his drink. He’s smirking at her around the straw.

 

—

 

Twenty-five minutes later, Steph stumbles back to the chairs where she left the others. Today’s the closest she’s ever come to begging on her knees and hugging someone’s legs pleadingly. She would’ve done it too, without any shame, if she knew it had a chance of convincing them. But realistically she’d just get evacuated from the airport for being a huge creepy  _weirdo_.

"How’d it go?” Jason asks. He has a bag of pretzels from a vending machine and Steph steals a handful from him because she’s starving. She shakes her head as an answer.

“Where’s Damian?”

“He went to go talk to somebody, like you were doing,” says Jason, waving in a vague direction. “He thought he could accomplish something by throwing around his Wayne-al Ghul influence.”

Steph’s stomach drops in horror. “Shit. Oh— oh  _shit_. Please no.” She glances around frantically for the boy, looking for the trail of blood and screaming bystanders. Jason watches her in amusement, eating pretzels leisurely like this is the most entertaining comedy he’s ever seen.

A couple minutes ago Steph thought things couldn’t get worse, and now… Yep, that’s Damian walking towards them. And just as she predicted, that’s a security guard with him, frowning sternly, one hand clamped on the boy’s shoulder.

 

—

 

For the third time, Steph has to explain while under the suspicious stare of an authority figure that no, she’s not Damian’s family but she has letters from both his parents and all the right paperwork showing she has permission to take him on a plane. And besides, his brother his here too. No, they’re not actually related… but legally they _are_  brothers. It’s complicated, see— they’re Bruce Wayne’s kids. Y’know,  _the_  Bruce Wayne?

And after much rambling and apologizing and  _begging_  the security guard lets them go, personally escorting them and their bags outside and giving a heavily hinted warning to not come back. Ever.

Steph takes a grateful breath of the outdoor air that smells like thick car exhaust and freedom—it’s so much better than the handcuffs and interrogation room she’d been terrified were looming over their heads—and then reality comes crashing down. They’re not arrested, but they’re still _screwed_.

“You threatened to stab someone with a pen?” Jason asks his younger brother.

Damian has his arms crossed, scowling at his feet. “She was being infuriating on purpose.”

“I didn’t even know they put twelve-year-olds on the no-fly list.” Jason sounds a bit impressed.

Steph checks the time on her phone. “Well, we’ve missed our plane,” she says hollowly, kneading her temples with her fingertips. “I’m doing it. I’m calling Alfred.”

There’s a collective wince of dread.

“Tell him to send one of the private jets,” says Damian. “I don’t see why they didn’t arrange one for us to begin with. Father owns several.”

“His  _company_  owns several,” Jason corrects.

“And Father owns the company.”

“Yeah, but most of the time the planes are being used. The company bigwigs need them for meetings in other countries. You know that.” Jason shrugs, digging a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket. “I’m just saying I won’t hold my breath.”

"Mother owns jets as well."

"Shh!" Steph admonishes, one hand covering her free ear in an attempt to drown out the noise of the street so she can hear her phone. "Quiet for a minute, I’m trying to— Hi, Alfred! Yeah, it’s me. How’s the wedding prep going?” She chuckles nervously as she listens. “…You  _serious_? Oh, wow, I’m glad you got that under control… Us? We’re good. Wait, I mean— no, we’re actually not, that’s why I’m calling… You’re right, we  _are_  supposed to be on the plane right now.” She frowns at Jason and Damian accusingly, then lets out a long-suffering sigh. “But there’s been a problem. I hate to break it to you, but your grandsons are huge security risks. I know, big shock right? They’ve both been blacklisted from commercial flights. Maybe for life, I don’t know.”

Steph listens, nodding and  _mmhmm_ -ing while Jason and Damian exchange nervous glances. If there’s one thing they’re frightened of, it’s Alfred’s displeasure. As they should be. When she hangs up, Jason’s tossing his pack of cigarettes from hand-to-hand like he’s considering lighting up a second one and Damian’s on his own cell phone, making rapid, clipped demands in a language Steph doesn’t recognize.

“Alfred said—” Steph begins, but Damian holds up a hand to quiet her and says something particularly biting and hostile into his phone. Steph can’t understand the language and yet she knows he just called someone an idiot, or worse. She turns to Jason. “Alfred said the jets are all tied up overseas. There was this giant conference—in Switzerland, I think?—and then this big strike at a couple airports… Just bad luck.” She guesses that’s the theme of the day. “We probably won’t get a plane until Monday, at the earliest. That’s if we’re lucky.”

Damian hangs up as angrily as he can on a touchscreen, jabbing at it ferociously with his finger. “ _Useless_ ,” he complains irritably. “Grandfather is in one of his moods and Mother had to travel to the castle he holed himself up in to stop him from enacting plans to take over the world, or something equally foolish. It’s on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. I cannot get in contact with either of them and Mother’s people are incompetent, no help whatsoever. No  _respect_. I hope she fires them all.“

“Sounds like we’re stuck here,” Jason says, pleased. “Too bad.”

Steph’s about to make a retort when she hears the loud, rapid clicking of a camera shutter, a sound that’s unmistakable to her after all the time she’s spent with Tim. She turns at the same time as Jason and Damian, and all three of them get a faceful of blinding camera flash.

She sometimes forgets that the Wayne boys are famous. Famous enough to have their own paparazzi stalkers.

Jason swears angrily beside her and grabs two of their suitcases. “We gotta get out of here,” he says, shoving Steph forwards. She and Damian pick up the rest of their bags and they all sprint to the parking lot, followed every step of the way by the clicks and flashes of the camera.

 

—

 

Steph pulls into a gas station parking lot, jacked up on adrenaline from her very first medium-speed car chase. They lost the paparazzi about a dozen blocks ago but she kept zigzagging between streets for a while after, just to be sure. It takes her a minute to pry her hands from the steering wheel, she’s been gripping it so tightly.

They head into the convenience store in search of food, since Steph is still starving. She scarfs down a prepackaged sandwich without stopping to worry about how long it’s been sitting on display. Then she’s scanning the shelves for her favourite kind of peanuts when she spots the little wire display stand of maps.

“Did you know…” She sneaks up behind Jason and Damian, wrestling with an unfolded map of the country, tracing a path across it with her finger. “From where we are right now, it would only take us about… forty-something hours to reach Gotham? We’d get there before the wedding, with plenty of time to spare.”

Jason shakes his head. “No, we won’t. Know why? Because after an hour the demon brat will have had enough and decide to murder both of us, then bury us in unmarked graves. He might make it in time for the wedding, though.”

Damian, browsing the nearby candy rack, neither confirms or denies Jason’s prediction. “Driving to Gotham is a terrible idea, Brown,” is all he says.

“You got any better ideas, then? Because we don’t have a lot of options. I mean, right now I’m scared of even setting foot in an airport with either of you because I _know_  what’ll happen and I really, really don’t want to get arrested.” She supposes they could try a train… but the boys are bound to find some way to ruin that, too. She just can’t trust them around any commercial transportation.

“That won’t be a problem if we fly private,” says Damian. “Probably.”

“Probably,” Steph repeats under her breath.  _Probably_. That isn’t too reassuring.

Damian yanks the map out of her hands, nearly ripping it, and examines it briefly. “Besides, you haven’t factored in stops for fuel, food, and other necessities…” He shakes his head like a teacher evaluating a hopeless student’s work. “And, if you want to stop at night to sleep, that’s approximately another twelve to sixteen hours overall. Unless you and Todd are taking shifts driving and sleeping.”

“No, he doesn’t get to drive. People that are mean to my car don’t get to drive it.” She looks at the map over his shoulder, thinking about it. “So, you’re saying it’ll be like… Three-ish days, maybe? That’s still not too bad. It’s still in time for the wedding on Tuesday.” And if by some miracle a private jet does get freed up, it can meet them at an airport on the way.

“You’re not seriously considering this, are you?” Jason groans. “Oh no, you  _are_.”

“This is ridiculous, Brown.” Damian scoffs, wadding the map up into a ball and tossing it at her head vindictively. When she manages to catch it, she feels victorious and he looks annoyed. “You won’t be able to last longer than a day before you give up, mark my words.“

That sounds like a  _challenge_. Steph raises an eyebrow at Damian, and Jason smacks his own forehead with his palm because he can tell she’s now completely committed, if only to prove the brat wrong.

 

—

 

“Rule number one,” Steph tells Jason once they’ve turned onto the highway. “No smoking in my car.”

“Gimme a little credit. I’m not that much of a jerk.” Jason fiddles with the radio dial, trying to find a good station, and for a while it’s silent except for the random bursts of noise and music. Damian’s being quiet and sulky in the backseat, hooked up to at least three different electronic devices. His resentful silence is a blessing, considering how  _mad_  he is about the impromptu road trip and how miserable he could make the other two if he felt like it.

“What if I kept the window open?” Jason asks. “Then none of the smoke would actually—” He catches the sharp glare Steph shoots his way and rolls his eyes. “I’m kidding. That was a joke.”

“You’re just as funny as I remember,” she remarks, chipper. He laughs.

Unhappy with his first decision, Jason reaches over to the stereo again and goes back to dialling through stations. He’s wearing an old threadbare t-shirt and Steph tries really not to stare at the shiny, stretched burn scars on his arms, from the accident he was in when he was younger, when he almost died. The accident nobody ever talks about.

“How’d you get stuck with brother-wrangling duty anyway?” he asks after he’s finally settled on a station. All classic 80s hits and not half-bad. “Dick forced it on you, right?”

“He  _asked_  me. I said yes. I mean, yeah, at the time I thought it was going to go a lot more smoothly, but… what’s done is done, I guess.” She shrugs. Looking at the bright side is the only way she’ll be able to get through this without screaming. “What matters is all of us getting to Gotham in time. I want Tim’s wedding to be as perfect as possible. That means we’ve all got to be there. Even  _you_ , believe it or not.”

Jason only grunts in response, watching the cars and signs pass by through the window and brooding in the manner that runs in his family. He taps his finger on his knee to the beat of  _Hot for Teacher_.

“Look, I know you don’t want to go to the—”

“Of  _course_  I don’t want to go to the wedding. It’s going to be a circus. Maybe literally, if Dickie’s been sticking his meddling nose into the wedding plans like I know he has.”

“I know,” Steph repeats. “But I was  _going_  to say that at least we’re missing most of the rehearsals? I thought you’d be happy about that, since you didn’t want to go to any of those.”

Steph feels bitter disappointment twist in her gut. She  _did_  want to go to the rehearsals. She was excited to spend all that time with Tim and Cass and get to know Tam better… And she’ll be missing Tim’s bachelor party, too. That’s happening tomorrow night.

It’s going to be an absolute blast and she’s  _missing it_. Quite possibly the best party she’ll ever have a chance to go to and instead she’s going to be exhausted and chauffeuring Tim’s two surly brothers across the country. For once it’s kinda hard to see a silver lining.

“If I don’t show up in time for rehearsals does that mean I don’t have to be in the wedding party?” Jason asks hopefully.

“Nope. Not unless you want to break Alfred’s heart.”

Jason swears under his breath. “Are you a part of it too?”

“The wedding party? Sort of. I wasn’t at first, but now I’m a fill-in bridesmaid. They had an uneven number and Tim really didn’t want to cut anyone on his side—he had a hard enough time narrowing it down the first time around. The wedding party’s  _packed_  because of him. Any more and it totally  _would_  be a circus.” She shakes her head as she remembers all the texted freak-outs and the dozens of times she had to assure and reassure him that her feelings wouldn’t be hurt if he left her out. Really, it’s fine. And she’s sure she wasn’t the only one rolling her eyes at slightly-panicked messages from him and promising not to be offended. Eventually he decided on all his siblings—urged by Alfred, no doubt—and his friends Bart and Ives as his groomsmen, with Conner as his best man. (At least, Steph _thinks_ that's everyone.) And all the rest of his friends breathed a collective sigh of relief. “Wait’ll you see Cass in her tux. She looks amazing.”

Steph’s a tiny bit jealous about that, actually. But the bridesmaids dresses Tam picked out are really nice—she and Steph share the same favourite colour. It’s a good sign. Steph’s only met her a couple of times, once when she was in Gotham last summer and then at the engagement party, and both times Tam was really cool and funny and  _nice_. It was actually her, not Tim, who called asking Steph to fill in as a bridesmaid when one of her friends flaked out.

Steph knows they’re going to be good pals, the kind that’ll share very embarrassing stories about Tim while he’s right there, sweating as he listens to what sounds like his wife and former girlfriend conspiring against him. That’s how it goes in Steph’s head, anyway.

Maybe they  _will_  decide to conspire against him… But she’s definitely getting ahead of herself.

“Also, me and Dick are going to be the emcees at the reception!” she tells Jason cheerfully. “I get to make a big speech.” She’s been working on it for  _weeks_  and she knows it’s going to be fantastic. As long as she can get there in time to give it.

“Cool,” Jason says listlessly. He’s barely been listening. “Is Donna going to be there?”

“Donna… Troy? Umm… I’d say yes, but… I’m not the gal to ask. I’m not one hundred percent sure. Dick’ll know. Text him.”

Jason picks up his phone. He doesn’t type anything, he just looks at the cracked glass of the screen for a moment and then dumps it in the cup holder. “What’s your speech about?”

“Oh, that’s a  _secret_ ,” she says, winking at him. “You’ll just have to wait and find out.”

 

—

 

Standing in front of the gas pump, Steph frowns down at the credit card in her hand. She slips it back into her wallet and turns around to rap on the side window of the car, making Damian look up and scowl at her through the glass.

She motions for him to roll down the window and he does, grudgingly.

“Damian, I was wondering if I could ask you for a teensy favour.”

He’s gone back to texting, but he gives a tilt of his head that she translates as a yes.

“See, my credit card’s close to its limit already and with all the gas stops we’ll need to make, I’m not sure how much more…”

Damian doesn’t wait for her to finish before he’s digging into his backpack for a slim black designer wallet that probably costs more than Steph’s rent for a month. It’s filled with shiny credit cards—ultra, ultra deluxe platinum level cards with near-limitless credit, the bills all footed by his obscenely wealthy parents.

She only gets a peek at the inside of his wallet before he closes it again but that’s  _definitely_  a little photo of his dog he’s keeping in there, the way a parent would keep pictures of their kids.

“Here.” He picks out a credit card carelessly and hands it to her like it’s as inconsequential as a stick of gum.

Maybe she should be embarrassed, asking for money from a preteen, but this isn’t any kid. This is Damian, who’s helped make her life a living hell so far today. So she feels no shame in swiping it at the pay n’ pump. “Can I keep it until we get to Gotham? Just to pay for gas and—”

“Fine. I don’t care.”

“I’ll pay you back, I swear.” It just might take her a long, long time. But she’s good on her word.

He gives a - _tt-_. “Don’t bother. Father won’t notice. He never does.” 

“Oh. Okay. Thanks, kiddo.” Steph smiles and reaches out to ruffle his hair, like she used to do when he was younger to make him pout so cutely. His hair is just a bit longer now and looks so fun to tousle that she can’t resist.

He catches her wrist before she can touch him. “Never try that again,” he warns.

 

—

 

“So…” Steph says, breaking the silence after a particularly boring stretch of highway. There’s nothing good on the radio, no scenery worth looking at, and no interesting conversation to be had. “What have you been up to lately, Jason? How’s the band going?”

Jason looks up from the textbook he dug out from under the seat. Humanistic psychology. Steph forgot it was there. He must be even more bored than her if he’s resorted to reading that—her prof for that class had chosen the driest, dullest textbook possible. “Band?”

“Yeah. Like, you and Kory Anders and Roy—”

“We’re  _not_  a band.” Jason rolls his eyes and flips a few pages. “You read that in one of those terrible magazines, didn’t you?“

“Well, yeah…” she admits. “But Dick and Tim told me, too.”

“That’s because Dick’s a huge gossip that loves spreading false information and Tim’s a little shit trying to make my life miserable as revenge for things I did when we were kids. Like— like when I dropped his GameBoy on the blacktop at recess. Or… or… I can’t even  _remember_. But he’s still holding grudges,” Jason grumbles, and he’s being a  _little_  overdramatic. Just a little. He slams the textbook shut irritably. “I let Kory talk us into karaoke night  _once_ , and now…“

“So, do you play guitar or drums?” Steph asks, grinning deviously.

Damian scoffs from the backseat. He’s been silent most of the trip so far—every time Steph adjusts the rear-view mirror to check on him he’s focused on a different handheld video game console—but for someone wearing headphones as an excuse to ignore the two of them he somehow never misses an opportunity to pipe in with a smart-aleck remark. “Please. Todd is incapable of playing any instrument more complicated than the triangle.”

“If you guys don’t drop it, I’m going to bail out right now and hitchhike. I swear to—”

“Ok, ok fine. We’ll stop. But  _please_  talk to me. I’m sick of the radio and I’m about ten seconds away from screaming, I’m so bored.” Earlier she’d met the eye of the driver passing her on the right and for a moment she very seriously wondered how she could convince him to drag race her, just to liven things up a little. “How’s everything? I heard you haven’t been in Gotham for a while.”

He snorts. “Yeah, because I wanted to keep as much distance as possible between me and any nuclear wedding drama.”

“But even before that—”

“I know. I was joking.” He pulls a pack of something from his pocket. Steph’s about to remind him, oh-so-patiently, about the  _first rule_ , but then she sees they’re not cigarettes. They’re the little sugary candy sticks he bought at the last rest stop. He sticks one between his lips and it does look a bit like a cigarette. “I was working with Doc Thompkins a while back, helping out at her clinic. You know Leslie, right? She has the free clinic by Crime Alley, the one that—”

“I know,” says Steph. “I’ve worked with her, too.”

“Right. Right, I remember hearing something like that. You went to Africa with her?” he asks, and she nods. He crunches the candy stick and sticks another in his mouth. “I was just helping out in Gotham, didn’t do any traveling. But I started branching out and getting involved in some foster centers in the Bowery. Volunteering. They’re pretty shitty places to grow up, so I thought I’d try to do what I could to make them more bearable. After a while I was practically running a couple of ‘em. Then I got a call from a woman in Star City who liked the work I was doing and asked me to work with some of their group homes. It was perfect timing—with the wedding creeping up I was about to ditch town for a bit to wait it out. I think Roy put her in contact with me, actually. He was probably sick of me complaining and trying to convince him to leave the country with me.”

“That’s… That’s really great, Jason. The volunteering thing.” A growing sense of guilt makes her frown. “Shit. Way to make me feel bad about dragging you away from that.”

Jason shrugs. “Nah, I’d done everything I could there. It was mostly a consulting job. The brats back in Gotham are the ones that need me. They’re gonna make me pay for being gone so long.” He smiles at her beseechingly. “You sure I can’t skip the wedding to hang out with them instead?“

“Not going to happen.”

“They’re  _orphans_ , Steph. They’ve been missing me. How can you be so heartless?”

“I think you and the kids can all wait one more day,” she says, her tone light and pleasant and  _just_  this side of patronizing.

He yawns and stretches his arms up. He’s not the only one stiff from being in the car for so long. Steph should make a rest stop soon. “Y’know, it’s kind of unfair,” he says. “Here you are, getting me to spill the reasons why I left Gotham, and I still don’t know  _your_  reasons.”

She blinks in surprise. “Reasons?”

“For why you left Gotham.”

“I did it for school,” she says, puzzled. She doesn’t understand why she’s being interrogated all of a sudden. “I got a really good scholarship.”

“You’d probably have your pick of scholarships in Gotham, thanks to Bruce. You’re practically family.”

“Maybe I didn’t want any more Wayne handouts.”

“Sure your scholarship isn’t Wayne-funded?” he prods. “How much digging have you done into the sponsor?”

Steph glares at him, her hands tightening on the steering wheel angrily. “Are you saying that I’m not capable of earning something like that on my own?”

“No, I’m saying that Bruce can be a manipulative asshole who sticks his nose into everyone’s business whether they like it or not. And I’m also saying that you’re a liar, because I know that’s not the  _real_  reason.”

“I really have no idea what you’re talking about? At all? Because I’m telling the truth.” And even as she says it, something inside her twinges because. Lying. Jason’s right. But she doesn’t want to talk about that.

So instead she talks about school. Incessantly. She tells Jason about all her classes and midterms and the friends she’s made, like Megan and Eddie, and Rose… And about how he would like Rose a lot; Steph could definitely see the two of them getting along. She talks about how they all live in the same building, tall and skinny with a lot of windows and really nice considering it’s student housing. They nicknamed it the Tower.

She talks, even after Jason’s given up all pretence of listening and gone back to reading the textbook, even though she knows he’s not buying any of it.

 

—

 

Steph’s eyeing the speedometer, wondering how much further over the speed limit she can go without risking arrest, and Jason’s perusing the huge, unruly map they bought at the convenience store when Damian decides to chuck his phone at Jason’s head.

It hits him hard on the skull with a hollow  _thunk_  of metal on bone. The resulting chaos of shouting and outrage and flailing paper blocking the windshield nearly causes Steph to lose control and crash the car into the ditch.

She swerves to safety at the last second, but it really makes her rethink her disregard of the speed limit. (At least for a couple minutes, it will.)

“What the hell was that for?” Jason’s yelling at Damian, rubbing the side of his head where a sizeable bump must already be swelling. That  _thunk_  was loud—Damian definitely wasn’t holding back. Cell phones are disposable to him. He can use them like baseballs if he wants. “I think I’m  _bleeding_.”

“You’re fine. Stop whining, Todd,“ Damian says dismissively. “The battery is dead. Since there is no means to charge it in this fossil of a car, I have no need of it. Brown, give me your phone.”

"Yeah, ‘fraid that’s not happening.” Steph bats aside his reaching hand. Entitled li’l brat. “I don’t have unlimited data and I’m not letting you rack up charges on my phone bill."

"I’ll pay you back. Now give it to me."

"I need it for emergencies, Damian. Like if the car breaks down? Kind of important."

Damian considers that. “I suppose with this piece of junk, that’s an inevitability.” He turns to Jason and tells him imperiously, “Todd, your phone. This is important.”

Jason doesn’t want to. He grumbles and complains and lets out an angry sigh through his nose, but keeping Damian happy is a worthy cause (and a good survival tactic), so he hands it over grudgingly. “Just ten minutes, all right?”

Damian hands it back an hour and a half later with a dead battery. At least he doesn’t throw it.

 

—

 

The sun set hours ago. Steph has been driving for much, much longer than she would ever care to drive and there’s still  _so much_  more to go. All her initial road trip adrenaline is completely drained, along with her patience and sanity and all the feeling in her gas pedal foot, which she’s not entirely sure is still attached to her body.

There’s silence from the backseat, the video game glow faded about half an hour ago. Damian is probably asleep. Steph’s envious.

Her butt is sore. Her head aches.

There are still plenty of miles ahead.

“You’re looking a bit rough,” Jason observes. “Maybe we should switch places for a while.”

“Like I’m going to let you drive my baby,” Steph says, rolling her very tired, very dry eyes. “I know how many cars you’ve trashed, Jason.”

There was Bruce’s black vintage sports car (before Jason even had his license), and the car he got on his sixteenth birthday, and the car  _Tim_  got on  _his_  sixteenth birthday, and that incident with the golf cart at the country club, and even the poor little remote-control fire truck Damian had when he was five. That toy didn’t stand a chance; the biggest pieces left were the itty-bitty tires.

“I’m just like Bruce,” he laments sardonically, waving a dramatic hand. “Doomed to keep hurting the things I love.”

Steph’s too exhausted to laugh. She yawns.

“I’ll be gentle,” Jason says, more seriously this time. “I swear.”

Steph ignores him. She just needs to drive a little farther, just until she reaches a place that sells coffee. Or energy drinks. Preferably both.

“You could at least slow down. It’s really dark out there and if you run over anything cute and fuzzy trying to cross the road, Damian will try to avenge their deaths. You remember those stitches I had to get the day after a squirrel ran under my tires? I’m still not convinced that knife ended up on my chair by  _accident_.”

“There’s nothing out there,” says Steph, stifling another yawn. “Besides, we’re making good time.”

A grinding screech under her tires startles her wide-awake. She drifted too close to the shoulder and onto the rumble strip. Quickly, she yanks the steering wheel back towards her lane. Jason shoots her a look that says  _see what I mean_? She ignores him some more.

“I’m sorry I was rude to your car,” Jason says after a couple minutes of dark highway and quietly humming radio. “I was wrong, okay? It’s a really nice car, actually. That’s why I don’t want you to crash and total it and end up  _killing us all_  because you’re falling asleep at the wheel. Come on, Steph.” He’s almost pleading now. “Just pull over and let me drive for a while.”

Her eyelids are so heavy and the idea of closing them for a while so tempting that her foot starts easing off the gas pedal and she doesn’t fight it. She pulls off onto the side of the road, then crawls into the passenger seat as Jason gets out and hurries around the car to the driver’s side. She closes her eyes and curls up as comfortable as she can in the seat and it’s so nice. So nice. She must drift off quickly, because she doesn’t even notice the car start moving again.

The next thing she knows Jason’s jostling her awake—they’re in a parking lot, there’s a big neon sign outside that makes her squint and wince when she opens her eyes. She blinks the blurriness away and tilts her head to read the word ‘ _MOTEL_ ’.

Steph tries to protest—they don’t have  _time_  for this, they have to keep driving—but Jason insists. “You’ll thank me in the morning after a few hours of sleep and a shower. Trust me—it makes most of the difference between an awful road trip and a tolerable one.”

And she finds that she’s much too sleepy to argue.

 

—

 

“This is disgusting.” Damian wrinkles his nose as he stops and looks around the small, shabby hotel room.

Jason elbows the boy aside so he can get through the door. He drops his overnight bag on the floor and shrugs before diving onto the bed, landing on his back. “Hey, this is the Ritz compared to some dumps I’ve stayed in,” he says, kicking off his shoes. “Clean sheets and everything.”

The only room they could get this late at night has only one bed, but it has a tiny sofa too. It’ll do. Steph grabs a spare blanket and pillow out of the dresser and flops down on the sofa, leaving the bed for the boys. She doesn’t even bother to change her clothes, just closes her eyes.

She wakes up two hours later according to her phone, with a sore back and a horrible crick in her neck. The sofa is lumpy and hard and feels like it’s stuffed with gravel—which, in this dump, is a real possibility.

Sitting up, she stretches out all her cramped-up joints. She can’t lie on this sofa another minute. It hurts. It’s beating her up.

She looks over at the bed. Damian is hogging the sheets and lying on his back in a way that looks stiff and uncomfortable. But he must be deeply asleep, because his usual scowl has relaxed, making him look so much younger, and he isn’t bothered by Jason’s soft breaths stirring his dark hair or the quiet snores next to his ear.

Jason is on his side, curled towards Damian, almost—but not-quite—touching. It looks almost… protective. Sweet. They are brothers, after all. No matter how much they fight it, or fight each other.

It makes Steph remember a camping trip she once took with the Wayne kids one summer back when she was in high school and dating Tim, during a lull of peace between Jason’s explosive falling-outs with the rest of the family, when Damian was littler and marginally less angry.

 

They were all jammed into two tents, so cramped they hardly had room to breathe, because Dick insisted that they camp the  _real_  way. Surprisingly, there was no bloodshed. Not even when she and Cass grabbed Damian and threw him in the lake, or when Jason  _yelped_  and fell backwards into the tent at the sight of the raccoon scrounging for scraps at their site and Dick and Tim laughed at him for a solid five minutes.

 

She walks to the bed, taking her blanket around her like a cloak. “Scoot,” she says quietly, nudging Jason’s back until he moves over enough for her to lie down. It’s cramped but it’s a thousand times more comfortable than that sofa from hell, and she’s so exhausted she falls asleep as soon as she closes her eyes.

Steph wakes up with one arm and one leg hanging over the edge of the bed. Jason’s crowding up most of the mattress. He’s lying on his stomach, snoring face-down into the pillow and when she shoves his shoulder off her other arm—so bloodless it’s  _numb_ —he doesn’t even wake up, just grumbles and rolls over towards Damian.

There’s a startled, annoyed grunt from the other side of the mattress, Steph registers groggily. She’s still half-asleep but she can feel the bed shaking and jostling, and then there’s a thud of someone falling on the floor.

Damian stands up. His eyes are bleary from sleep and narrowed in rage, his clothes are rumpled and he’s suffering from an photo-worthy case of bedhead. He looks like a murderous, ruffled cat, the kind with the squashed-in faces. It’s cute. Steph fumbles at the nightstand for her phone but she must have left it by the sofa, because it’s not there. Too bad.

“Todd, your fat ass pushed me off the bed!” Damian shouts. “I told you to stay on your side!” He takes his revenge by jumping up on the bed and kicking a very groggy Jason in the side, just under his ribs, with all his might. Actually more of a  _stomp_  than a kick. That helps wake Jason up fast.

Jason yells in pain, clutching his side. For a few seconds all he can do is lie there and take hissing breaths between his teeth, his eyes clenched shut. It must have hurt a lot. Not surprising, considering it was  _Damian_.

“What the _hell_!” he cries out, gasping as he struggles to sit up. “It was an accident! You didn’t have to kick me!”

Then Jason’s off the bed and tackling his younger brother, grabbing him in a headlock. There’s shouting and chokeholds and punching and Damian even tries to bite Jason’s hand at one point. They fight dirty. While they’re busy wrestling, Steph takes the opportunity to slip around them and take first dibs on the bathroom.

But, man, the yelling and fighting really does take her back to old days. She doesn’t think any of those Wayne kids are ever going to grow up, not really.

 

—

 

“Brown!” Damian shrieks from the bathroom. “You used up all the hot water!”

“There wasn’t any!” she calls back. She and Jason snicker to each other as they pack up their stuff. “And hurry up—we’re heading out soon. Got a lot of distance to cover today!”


	2. Chapter 2

Damian might be too young for coffee. But with the kind of day they had yesterday, and the kind of day they’re  _going_  to have, Steph figures it’s all right to let him order a cup with breakfast. Hopefully she won’t regret it later.

The boy picks at his waffles skeptically with his fork. They were one of the few vegetarian options on a menu full of bacon and sausages and more bacon.

“How are they?” Steph asks after he takes an experimental bite.

He wrinkles his nose. “Subpar.” 

“Mine are really good. You should’ve gotten the chocolate-chip like I told you, or asked for whipped cream—”

“These are hardly edible as it is.” He takes another bite. “We should demand our money back.”

Steph shares a weary look with Jason. The last thing she needs is Damian getting them evicted from the premises before she gets to finish her coffee. 

“But… if they’re so bad, why are you still eating them?”

Damian doesn’t answer, just scowls at her as he keeps eating. He clears his plate before either of them, carefully places his knife and fork diagonally on his plate—Steph considers pointing out that this isn’t  _that_   _kind_  of restaurant—then slides out of the booth without a word. Steph hears the jingle of the bell on the door as he crosses into the attached convenience store. He’ll take any excuse not to be in their company, it seems.

She waves over the server that’s been not-so-surreptitiously taking pictures of them with his phone. It’s annoying not just how famous Jason and Damian are, but also how  _recognizable_ ; Jason with that unmistakeable white streak in his hair, standing well over six feet tall, and Damian with his regal bearing and lifetime of media attention). They’ve been getting curious looks at every rest stop so far.

She orders Damian another plate of waffles. With chocolate chips  _and_  strawberries. He’ll thank her. Well, not out  _loud_  or anything, but… yeah.

“What’s making headlines?” Steph asks Jason. He glances up at her over the top of the local newspaper he’s reading.

“A middle school bake sale didn’t do as well as expected,” Jason says boredly. “Front page news.”

“Oh. Sounds like they didn’t make enough dough.”

“You’re worse than Dick,” Jason says, grimacing into his tea—earl grey, the kind Alfred got all the Wayne kids hooked on. Jason claimed coffee makes him too tense and jittery.

"I just want to, you know, apologize for all the shit I put you through in the airport yesterday,” he says. “It’s not you I’m pissed off at, it’s…" A faint scowl crosses his face, and he shakes his head. "I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. And I feel really bad that you’re missing all the rehearsals and wedding brouhaha you were probably looking forward to. It’s not fair. So I was thinking, since you’re the only one of us that’s still allowed to fly, I could drop you off at the nearest airport. That way you won’t miss anything. And I can drive me and Damian the rest of the way.“ 

Steph spears a strawberry on her fork and chews it slowly, considering what he’s said. “One, there is no way I’m leaving you guys alone with my car. Two, nice try—but do you actually think I’m gonna fall for that? And three… Thanks.” She smiles. “Really, thanks for the offer. And the apology. But don’t worry, there’s still going to be plenty of wedding brouhaha left when we get there. So you better start getting excited!”

“Oh, I already am,” he drawls unhappily, turning the page of the newspaper to a story about a new traffic light. Steph reads the headline upside-down. Thrilling. “Can’t you tell?”

Damian returns with an utterly trashy (the  _trashiest_ ) gossip magazine featuring a juicy three-page spread on Tim and Tam’s upcoming wedding at the same time the server brings the extra plate of waffles Steph ordered for him.

Damian looks at the plate placed in front of him and… there’s no smile, or a  _thank you_ , but he gives a small nod of approval. And that’s something.

 

—

 

The magazine Damian found is pure  _gold_. Jason reads the article out loud in the car, and Steph laughs so hard that tears are streaming down her face and it’s downright dangerous because she can hardly see where she’s driving.

But. Wow. She will never get over the line about how “the invitations were the same blue as the groom sparkling eyes.” She might have to rewrite her speech.

Even Damian sniggers a bit at the article. Steph adjusts the rearview mirror to check on him and catches him smirking in amusement as Jason reads aloud the part about the totally 100%  _false_  rumour that the newlyweds are in talks with studio execs about an upcoming reality show documenting life in Gotham “from a fresh, vibrant, youthful perspective.”

Steph would probably watch that. Definitely watch that.

“I don’t get why you’re so against this wedding,” she tells Jason after he’s done scornfully reciting another paragraph about the couple’s apparently controversial choice of floral arrangements. “Why don’t you want them to get married? Do you not like Tam or something?”

"No, I like Tam fine,” Jason says, looking almost affronted. “She’s one of Lucius’s kids; I’ve known her for years. Frankly I think she’s way too good for Tim. It’s just… too soon. Tim’s like, seven years old. Twelve, tops."

"Your second guess is a lot closer, but you’re still ‘bout a decade off,” Steph says dryly. “He’s always been mature for his age.”

Jason snorts in agreement. “He’ll hit his midlife crisis at twenty-five. It’s going to be horrible. For everyone.” He sighs. “You wanna know why I think the wedding is a bad idea? Every wedding I’ve been to was a complete mess. Dick and Kory almost got married, remember? They were at the altar and the priest had a heart attack.”

“I… I heard about that,” says Steph.

“Dick and Barbara were engaged for a while, but that fell through, too,” Jason continues. “And then there was Oliver Queen’s wedding—he’s Roy’s adopted dad. I wasn’t there, but I heard it was a near-disaster. They actually got through the vows, despite everything. Then things went sour on the honeymoon.”

“I thought they were still together?”

“For a while, yeah. Not anymore. Actually, I’m not sure…” He trails off for a moment, thinking, then he says, “I was at Bruce and Talia’s wedding, you know. It wasn’t that long after Bruce took me in. I was like, thirteen? Or fourteen. I forget. They tried to keep it small and private, keep the media out of it as much as possible. And they did. It worked. But then, while everyone was in the house getting ready, a bunch of ninjas attacked. I’m not joking.”

Steph raises a skeptical eyebrow at him. “Real ninjas.”

“Real ninjas,” he confirms. “Dressed in black, carrying swords, sneaking into the manor. Talia’s family is  _nuts_ , as I’m sure you’ve heard. No offense, Damian,” Jason tells the boy in the backseat. “Then again, not like we’re much better. But, yeah. Ninjas. Some enemy of Talia’s dad didn’t want the marriage to happen because it would mean the Wayne and al Ghul companies forming a partnership. I don’t know. Something like that. I don’t see why that calls for ninjas. But Talia was actually prepared for this. She had bodyguards in the manor, and it turns out they were all ninjas, too. Probably the most surreal morning of my life. But in the end nobody was hurt and the bad ninjas were captured and carted off. And the wedding happened anyway.”

“Was it a nice wedding? After… all that?”

“Yeah, I guess. Food was good.” The memory makes Jason smile a bit, so it can’t have been that bad. Then it flickers into a frown and he glances aside, out the window. Steph can’t see the expression on his face. “Didn’t last, though. It sucks… back then I really thought it would. Guess I was too young to know better.”

“Shut  _up_ , Todd!” Damian blurts out angrily, startling them both. He leans forward, nearly out of his seat, sticking his face forward between the two of them and right into their conversation. “You know  _nothing_. Mother and Father’s… separation was a matter of circumstance. That is all. They will reconcile when the time is right.”

“Squirt, you weren’t there when things started falling through,” says Jason. “Well, you were, but you were like three years old. You don’t remember what it was like.”

“They have been together since then. Several times.”

“Sort of. But it’s never lasted longer than a month, you know that.”

“Shut up!” Damian yells again. Right next to Steph’s ear. Ow. His teeth are bared and he looks about ready to maim. “Your opinion doesn’t matter. It’s none of your business. It’s  _our_  business. Mine. They are  _my_  parents, not yours, and you have no right to speak of something that doesn’t involve you.”

There’s a heavy, ringing kind of silence. Jason doesn’t say anything, just crosses his arms, his expression a mask of indifference. Damian sits back down in his seat and clamps his headphones over his ears. The radio buzzes static softly.

Steph opens her mouth to say something, but Jason catches her eye and shakes his head. It’s a while before the tension eases enough for any of them to speak again.

 

—

 

Steph’s swapped driving duty with Jason and she’s just about to lie down for a nap in the backseat when she gets a text that makes her question her faith in humankind. And let out a loud squawk that causes the boys to glance back inquisitively.

“Cass sent me this!” She shoves her phone in their faces, showing them the picture of ruin and despair. “Look!  _Look_.”

Damian only spares it a short glance before going back to his video game. “I don’t get it.”

“His  _hair_. She said Alfred finally convinced him to get a haircut. Before the wedding, y’know. But nobody expected it to be this  _short_. This is a tragedy.” Jason still looks confused, and Steph remembers that he really hasn’t been spending much time with his family lately.

“Good riddance,” says Damian, robotically clacking buttons on his game. “Once I tried to do him a favour by lighting it on fire, but Grayson stopped me.”

 “Sounds like he was trying to pull a Dick—no euphemism intended. Remember the rat tail? I swear sometimes it seemed like that thing was  _alive_.” Jason gives a mock shudder. “I’d say we all dodged a bullet. Me and Cass had to cut Dick’s hair in his sleep and he sulked for  _weeks_. I think he kept it. The ponytail.”

Steph rolls her eyes. It’s hopeless. The two of them just don’t  _understand_. She sighs lamentably. “What am I going to tease him about now?”

“His dreadful taste in music, “ Damian suggests.

“The fact that he still goes red at the word ‘boobies’,“ adds Jason.  


 “How he twitches his nose like a rabbit when he’s frustrated.“

“Every fashion decision he made from ages twelve to seventeen.”

They go on and on. Reminiscing about Tim’s awkward phase keeps them from fighting, so she doesn’t stop them. Even though they must be exaggerating because she doesn’t remember Tim’s clothes being  _that_  bad—she personally thought the turtlenecks were cute. But she knows better than to argue that with  _them_.

 

—

 

Steph’s woken up by Jason calling her name. She really doesn’t want to get up. She’s cozy in the backseat, wrapped up in the fluffy blanket she’d originally packed with the intention of napping with on the plane. It’s been getting a lot of use on this trip.

“What?” she says groggily, finally giving in and sitting up. “Is it time to switch?”

“Is that sound normal?” Jason asks. Damian’s turned towards Steph and looking out the back window in worry.

“What sound? I don’t—” And then she hears it. A shrill, steady rattling from the very back of the car, near the trunk. “Oh. Yeah, uh, I’ve never heard that before. Weird.”

 “I  _knew_  this car was defective,” declares Damian. “It could fall apart at any second. Or— or  _explode_ , like you said, Todd. It’s unfit for driving. Unsafe.”

“My car isn’t going to explode! It’s perfectly safe.”

“I think it’s probably got to do with the latch on your trunk. Not a big deal,” Jason says nonchalantly. “We need to stop soon for lunch anyway, I’ll check it out then. If we’re not all charred corpses by then.”

Steph groans in exasperation and flops back down on the seat, pulling the blanket over her head to block out those losers. And that increasingly annoying rattling.

 

—

 

Steph worriedly chews on the plastic spoon in favour of finishing her melting sundae as she watches Jason poking around in her car’s open trunk. It’s absolutely nerve-wracking.

He moves around their suitcases, slams the trunk a few times—and Steph cringes because he really doesn’t have to slam it  _that_  hard—and even lies down on the gross parking lot cement and checks under the car.  Finally, he closes the trunk and turns to look at her, wiping his dirty, dusty hands on his jeans.

“Well, doc, what’s the diagnosis?” she asks, praying it’s not bleak.

“I have no idea,” he says. And that’s… not what she was expecting to hear. “Your trunk’s fine. Nothing else seems to be loose…” He rakes his bangs back with one hand as his eyes scan over the car one more time, and then he pauses. Cocks his head. Thinking. “Wait—you know what? It must be your spoiler.”

“Spoiler?”

“Yeah,  _this_  eyesore.” He grabs at the fancy, supposedly-aerodynamic metal flap that makes the car look so sporty and tries shaking it a bit. It does rattle, faintly. “I don’t really have the tools or time to fix it, but it probably wouldn’t be that hard to just take it off for now and stick it in the trunk. It’d stop that  annoying noise.”

“You’re not breaking anything off my car.” Steph steps forward, crowding him away from her car so she can stand between them. “No way. Hands off, psycho.  _Now_.”

“I’m not breaking it. I can reattach it once we’re back in Gotham. It’s not a big—”

“Nope.” She glares at him. He smirks and reaches out towards the spoiler again, so she quickly plasters herself over the back of her car, shielding it. “ _Nope_. Back off, unless you want something of  _yours_  broken. I mean it. I’ll snap something clean off. Painfully.”

Amused, he half-heartedly puts up his hands in surrender. “Fine. Whatever you say. But we’ll see how long you can put up with that racket before you change your mind.”

Damian joins them in the parking lot with a half-finished ice cream of his own. “Have you fixed it?” he asks, looking at the car warily.

“Absolutely!” says Steph. Damian raises an eyebrow at her suspiciously. “One hundred percent. Now pile in, you two. We need to get on the road if we’re going to stay on schedule.”

Maybe she’s still a little incensed, because she hits the gas with too much gusto as she’s backing up and the car suddenly halts with a lurch and a crunch of metal as it hits the fence.

Steph stares forward in horror, her mouth hanging open speechlessly—her thoughts a racing circuit of  _oh shit oh damn oh nO_ —while Damian frantically dives forward into the front seat, trying to put distance between himself and the ticking bomb he seems to believe the back of the car is made of. He winds up falling in Jason’s lap. They both stare at her with huge, terrified eyes, cartoonish-ly so, that her moment of panic dissolves into laughter and she has to hide her face against the steering wheel.

“See?” she says once she catches her breath. “Told you it wouldn’t explode.” But they seem to have already realized that. Damian’s struggling to get away from Jason at the same time Jason’s shoving him away. Jason gets a foot to the jaw in the process.

Her car is fine, she finds out to her utter relief. A scratch on the fender. And her spoiler is even looser than before, holding on by a prayer but still  _holding_  on.

Once they’re rolling down the highway it starts rattling twice as loud as before.

 

—

 

Just after lunch, Damian wins a call-in radio contest.

He’s sitting up beside Steph in the passenger seat, but the miles of repetitive highway have her zoning out so far that she doesn’t even notice he’s on the phone until he talks and she hears his voice coming out of the  _radio_ , too.

“That term refers to a group of owls,“ he’s saying. There’s a victorious chiming sound from the radio. Whatever the question was, that’s the right answer.

The radio announcer is congratulating Damian when the station suddenly cuts out to static. Steph’s driven out of range, so she can’t hear what the announcer says next. But it makes Damian wrinkle his nose in disappointment.

“ _That’s_  the prize? No. I don’t want that.” 

And he hangs up.

Steph blinks at him in surprise. She considers asking him what on earth possessed him to participate in a radio contest in the middle of nowhere and not even take the prize—was it good? was it money?? free food? maybe  _she_  would’ve liked to have it, did he think of that? huh??—but the only thing that comes out of her mouth is, “How— How did you even know the answer to that?”

“Cassandra bought Drake a ridiculous trivia board game for Christmas years ago.” Damian’s back to playing with his phone, already over the thrill of victory. “We were all forced to play, and afterwards I had to be certain I would never lose against him again.”

“Cass and Tim had a ceremonial burning of the board game ‘bout a month later, once Damian sucked all the fun out of it,” Jason adds. He’s lying down in the backseat with his leather jacket over his face, but apparently awake and listening. “He turned game nights into torture. At least he couldn’t cheat at things like Scrabble, or Mouse Trap.” 

“I didn’t cheat. I simply knew all the answers. It was a knowledge-based game and I had the most knowledge.”

“You  _memorized_  all the questions and answers. That’s cheating,” Jason accuses.

“See, I don’t remember any of that,” says Steph. “I think I came in during the Risk era.”

“Oh no.” Jason gives a groan, muffled under his jacket. “Don’t talk about that game. B threatened to ship us all off to boarding school because of that game.”

Damian tenses at that, a scowl taking over his face, and chooses to slide his headphones over his ears and crank the volume. And they were all getting along so _well_ , too. For a few moments, at least. 

 

—  
  


_i hear you’re coming back home, big brother :)_

_Alfred kept your room exactly as you left it :)_

_(don’t worry. he didn’t find your secret hidden spot under your closet floor ^v^)_  
  


_That’s a relief._  
  


_but he found the cigarette pack you keep in the bookcase D:_  
  


_Fine. Just a decoy._

_Steph showed me a pic of you in the wedding tux. Looks better on you than it will on me. Do I have to wear one?_  
  


_yes :)_  
  


_I didn’t even get fitted._  
  


_Alfred knows all our sizes v.v_

_your tie is red though. not purple. they’re mixed :)_  
  


_I’m going to take it off first chance I get anyway. How’s the wedding mayhem?_  
  


_Dick is sad that Tim doesn’t want the fire jugglers :(_  
  


_I knew he was going to try something like that._

_I knew it._  
  


_dont know much else. i’m staying with Barbara c:_  
  


_That was going to be MY plan._

_There’s still room on the couch, right?_  
  


_no :( Dinah’s here too_  
  


_I’ll sneak a sleeping bag out of the manor._  


—

 

“It is past time for a rest stop,” Damian announces.

“It’s been less than an hour,” says Jason. “You really need to learn to hold it in, kid.”

“Maybe if you stopped getting those slurpees every time we stop, you wouldn’t be having this problem, huh?” Steph adds. Damian glares at her and takes a long sip of his half-melted jumbo slurpee. His mouth is bright blue. Neither of his parents’ lifestyles really include many gas station slurpees, so he’s decided to get his fill during this trip. Steph hopes that, if he does throw up, he manages to do it out the window.

He’s lying down in the backseat, sprawled out with his shoes kicked off and his arms folded under his head. Steph ragged on him for half an hour to put his seatbelt on until he conceded, but the awkward way it’s twisted around him doesn’t look like it’ll be any good in an accident.

He snorted when she told him that earlier. “No seatbelts are going to help us when this scrapheap goes up in flames,” he had said snidely. And she’s sick of arguing that her car won’t spontaneously combust. She’s  _done_.

Jason won’t stop fiddling with the air conditioning dial, complaining that it’s too hot in the car. Because of him it’s now  _freezing_. Cold enough that Steph’s hands feel like ice, frozen to the wheel. But every time she turns the dial warmer Jason turns it cold again when she’s not looking.

She accidentally grabs the wrong dial and changes the radio station instead of turning down the air conditioning, and she doesn’t change it back. She loves this song. Can’t resist singing along to the chorus.

“ _~so if you’re too school for cool~_ “ Damian sings along as well, in a shrill, mocking imitation of her voice. Steph stops and shoots a glare at him. “ _~and you’re treated like a fool~_ “

“Ha-ha, Damian. Very funny. I know I don’t sound like that.”

“Actually…” Jason says under his breath, smirking. Jerk.

“My mimicry skills are  _flawless_ , Brown,” Damian says. “How dare you insult me.”

She rolls her eyes. “Gee, I wonder… How do you know the lyrics, by the way?”

“Grayson’s fault.”

“Suuure,” drawls Jason.

“Have you been in a vehicle with him? He plays the same songs over and over. Relentlessly.”

“Whatever you say, Damian,” Steph says sweetly. That’s an excuse if she’s ever heard one. “Speaking of Dick… I think I used to have mix CD he burned for me. It’s gotta be around here somewhere…”

All the colour drains from Damian’s face.

 

—

 

“Where— Where are we?” asks Steph, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. The sun is setting low and pink over fields and fields of endless farmland. She stares out the window, so disoriented that it all looks like an alien landscape to her.

“Oh, we’re back in Kansas, Dorothy,” Jason replies. “Have a good nap?”

“Kansas?” She’s finally awake enough to notice that the car is shaking and lurching because they’re on a gravel road. They shouldn’t be on a gravel road. They’re supposed to be on the highway. This is all wrong.

“Smallville, to be precise,” says Damian. “A place as exciting as the name sounds.”

Jason frowns. “Come on, it’s not that bad. We used to have fun here when we were younger.”

“I hardly remember. Perhaps  _you_  had fun digging around in the dirt and— and cleaning up animal excrement, but—”

“But  _why_  are we  _here_?” Steph interrupts. “Jason, we don’t have time for detours and— and unnecessary stops, okay? You should have asked me first.”

He doesn’t seem too concerned. And he doesn’t seem like he’s planning on turning the car around. “It’s not that far off our route. And if the Kents found out we were nearby and didn’t stop in, they’d never forgive us.”

“The  _Kents_? You mean like, Conner and Kara? And Clark? Those Kents?” She’s briefly met Conner and Clark, but she knows Kara best. They’re good friends. They met at one of Tim’s birthday parties years ago and totally hit it off.

“Yeah. I mean, I don’t think  _those_  Kents won’t be at the farm, but Ma and Pa will be. Clark’s parents.”

“You call them Ma and Pa?”

“Well, yeah.” Jason shrugs as he turns from the gravel road onto a dirt one with a red barn and a little farmhouse at the end of it. “They insist.”

Steph learns that first-hand a minute later, when she’s having all the breath in her lungs hugged out of her by the sweetest elderly couple she’s ever met. Then she, Jason, and Damian are all being pushed inside and towards the dinner table.

 

—

 

Steph finally manages to excuse herself and escape outside for some fresh air after a dinner so delicious that she had to pop the top button of her jeans halfway through. (She tries to forget that she ate three times as many mashed potatoes as anyone else. Those potatoes were  _dangerous_.)

Wanting to get a little distance, she walks across the yard to the barn, where the cows are mooing. There’s an old tractor parked nearby. Frogs are croaking from a pond and the sky is full of more stars than Steph has ever seen in her poor, sad, star-hungry city life. She didn’t know places like this still  _exist_. 

Sure, Kara said she’d grown up on a small farm, a quaint place, but… Steph doesn’t think it’s quite possible to imagine or anticipate quaintness to  _this_  degree. This is like, Little House on the Prairie quaint. This is the pinnacle of quaint. Especially Mr and Mrs Kent. Ma and Pa. And Jason was right, they had insisted.

Ma and Pa had kept talking about how much each of them had grown since the last time. Even Steph, even though this is actually the first time she’s met them (though apparently they’ve heard everything about her from Kara). But thank you, she  _does_  feel like she’s grown a lot lately in a lot of ways and she’s very proud.

"We can only stay for a nap and a shower,” Jason told them regretfully during dinner. “Only got about four hours to spare. But we’ll see you at the wedding.”

A nice hot shower sounds inviting, but first Steph has to make a phone call, somewhere private. She pulls out her cell phone. Signal is terrible out here. She makes the call anyway.

She takes a deep breath as it’s ringing. “Hi, Mom,” she says cheerfully. “Yeah, I’m fine. Not in Gotham yet, no… There was a problem at the airport, so I’m driving. I probably won’t be in the city until the day before the wedding. But I’m more interested in how  _you’re_  doing. I miss you. Is he there? Is—”

Interrupted, she listens with as much patience as she can muster. There’s a bit of static on the line that makes it difficult to hear, but Steph knows the gist of it. She’s heard it a hundred times before.

She rolls her eyes. “I  _know_  what I promised, Mom, but it’s not fair. You shouldn’t have to deal with that scumbag. Neither of us should. And we don’t have to. If I just—” 

She’s cut off by a huge blast of static. Her mom probably didn’t hear a word and Steph can’t hear a word from her mom’s end, either.

She climbs up and sits on the tractor, careful not to press any buttons or pull any levers. It’s higher ground. And a bit of a novelty. “Can you hear me now?” she asks, to no reply. Her phone dropped the call and now she’s got zero bars. Fantastic.

Searching for better signal, she roams around the yard without success. One bar flickers for a split second by the chicken coop, but she can’t get it to stay.

“What are you doing?” a scathing, judgmental voice calls out as she’s walking past the vegetable garden on her tiptoes holding her phone up over her head.

Steph doesn’t need to turn around to know it’s Damian. But she does anyway. He’s watching her from up on the porch, sitting on a wooden bench and petting a white dog that’s lying its head on his knee.

“Scavenger hunt.”

“For what?”

She holds up her phone towards him, shakes it a little. “Bars. I’m at zero.”

“I wouldn’t waste my time. This place is a dead zone. My signal strength is abysmal.” He scowls down at his own phone, his face lit up by the screen’s glow. “I’ve been waiting over twenty minutes for one text to go through.”

“Oh. To who?”

“My father.”

“You text him?” She smiles. “That’s really cut— cool. That’s cool.”

He looks at her oddly. Like he thinks she’s raving mad. “It is an efficient form of communication.”

I just think it’s really nice. I mean, I know you don’t see him all the time, so it’s nice you two stay in touch like that. You must be very close. That’s really—”

“Are you about done?” he asks, verging on annoyance.

Yeah, she’s done. She doesn’t know why she tries. “I’m going inside.” She could really use a shower after such a long day on the road. And maybe there’s some mashed potatoes left. At the door she pauses and glances back at Damian. “You coming in soon?”

He shrugs, not looking up from the glow of his phone.

 

—  


_i finally have signal again! how’s the bachelor party going?? wish i was there!!!_

_but homemade apple pie was a pretty dec consolation prize_  
  


_I’m so jealous right now. You have no idea. STOP sending pictures_

_Bart tried to light illegal fireworks in the limo_

_I feel like we’re all five minutes away from being arrested. I don’t want to go to jail the weekend before my wedding_  
  


_dont worry, dick would never let that happen :)_

_and worst case scenario u always have alfred to post bail for u_  
  


_oh SHIT! The cops are here! IT’S HAPPENING. WE’RE GOING TO JAIL_

_HELP_  
  


_Tim???? are you ok?_

_hello?_

_???_  
  


_They’re not real cops_

_I feel like I should have known that from the beginning?_

_But I can’t really talk right now. Sorry! I still wish you were here_

_Or I wish I was there. I haven’t decided yet_  
  


—

 

Steph needs to talk. It’s three in the morning, Jason’s sleeping in the back after his shift at driving, and Damian’s with her up in the front, resolutely ignoring her in favour of his video game. 

He got to charge all his devices at the farmhouse, which is great because it keeps him from complaining, but terrible because Steph  _needs_  to talk or she’s scared she’ll fall asleep at the wheel. Waking up for her shift was  _hard_. She’s dragging and the energy drink she bought at the last gas station is wearing off. But talking to Damian is like talking to a brick wall.

“I can’t believe you guys used to hang out at an honest-to-god  _farm_  in the summer,” she says. She  _tries_. Tries so, so hard. “I bet you have a lot of fun memories, right?”

“Perhaps if I had been old enough at the time to remember them,” he says boredly. It’s the fourth sentence she’s gotten out of him in the past hour. “By the time I was, the others were too old to want to spend their summers here.”

“Oh, don’t be like that. I know you remember some of it. I think— I  _think_  Tim told me once about chickens. About how you all got a flock of chickens riled up by accident—but I don’t know how you can light a bottle rocket by accident, but whatever—and they chased you across the yard.” She’s trying to recall if Tim said  _where_  it happened. She always assumed it was some field trip, or fundraiser. But maybe he had mentioned Kent farm and she’d just forgotten. “And once he said something about Dick being terrified of leeches because of a pond you used to swim in. Was that at the farm, or—”

 “Would you  _shut up_?” Damian demands, glowering at her over his video game. “I’m sick of your ceaseless prattling. I don’t care. Get that through your thick skull.”

Steph doesn’t back down. She scowls right back at him. “What’s with the attitude, huh?” she snaps, exhausted and testy and on her last frayed nerve. “What’s the big deal?”

“I…” He actually hesitates. Falters. For a second his smug facade cracks and he actually looks his age.

“ _What_? Spit it out, Damian.”

“I don’t  _know_ ,” he blurts out, flushing angrily. He slams his video game shut and crosses his arms. “Just leave me alone, Brown.”

“I wish it were more possible, but we’re kinda stuck in the same tiny car.” She sighs. “Look, I know this trip sucks. I mean, I think there’s been a few bearable moments but it definitely sucks as a whole. I didn’t ask for this either, if you remember.”

“It isn’t… just about the trip,” Damian says grudgingly, after a couple minutes of tense, fuming silence for both of them. After long enough for Steph to give up on expecting a response.

“Yeah. Didn’t think so. You can talk to me, you know. It’s one of the only things we can do in here, and since we’re stuck with each other’s company we might as well.” The car feels so small and stuffy when one of them is sulking. It’ll be nice to clear the air. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine too… Um. It’s… It’s about your parents, isn’t it?”

“I hate them. Sometimes,” he admits, and Steph can’t help but be surprised—not just because of what he’s saying, but because it’s the most he’s opened up to her in… ever, really. “They— They sent me  _away_. They sent me to boarding schools because it was easier than trying to arrange custody between both of their schedules. They didn’t want the bother.”

“Damian, they weren’t sending you away. You  _know_  that’s not true. Your parents love you. I’m sure they were just trying to give you some stability, y’know? So you weren’t being uprooted all the time. And those schools—they were like the best in the world, right? And…” She trails off, wincing, because she has no idea what she’s even saying. No idea why she’s making excuses for Damian’s parents. Excuses won’t make him feel better. “And… I’m not really helping, am I?”

He lets out a disgruntled  _tt_. “Not at all.”

“You know what really might help? If you, y’know, actually talk to them. Not that thing you do where you talk at people and don’t bother to listen because you assume you already know their half of the conversation.” It’s the best advice she can give. She’s tired. Nearly delirious. “Do you want to stay in Gotham more? Is that it?”

“I’ve thought about it. I don’t know. Nobody is  _in_  Gotham anymore. Only Drake stuck around. Grayson and Cassandra are gone… Even  _you_.”

“Oh. I didn’t think you cared that much. Or even noticed,” she adds jokingly. It falls flat. Of course it falls flat. She’s with Damian.

“Of course I noticed,” he says seriously. “You used to watch me at the Manor when the others were forced to go to Father’s business dinners.” Damian sees the look on her face and quickly scowls. “I  _noticed_ , that is all. Don’t flatter yourself, Brown.”

“Okay, I won’t.” She’s just surprised that he remembers. They’re probably fond memories to him, of all the fun he had getting into trouble and locked rooms, using his lego blocks and toy dinosaurs as  _weapons_ , being a little terror because his dad wasn’t around to see. Steph, on the other hand, has done her best to block out those dreaded evenings of babysitting the demon preschooler. She suffered more than a few bites.

“I heard Father and Drake talking once, about why you moved away.”

“You mean you were eavesdropping because you’re a nosy sneak.”

“They left the door open. If they didn’t notice me outside my father’s study, that was their own fault. Or, rather, if they didn’t notice me in  _time_. I heard them mention your father.” 

And just from that Steph immediately knows. She knows  _he_   _knows_  the whole story.

“Yeah, he’s… he’s a real piece of work.” A rotten person and an even rottener dad.

She wants to tell Damian that he’s lucky. That both his parents really care, that they’ll always be there for him when he really needs them. That they would never lock him in a closet and forget about him until the next morning. But arguing with an angry, recently-turned teenager about whose parents suck more seems like an awful, awful idea.

“He’s been in and out of jail a bunch of times,” she says. “Likes to make me and my mom’s lives miserable. He always makes a mess of our house, brings all his buddies over and turns it into crime central. We’ve called the cops on him, we’ve tried restraining orders, tried  _everything_  and it doesn’t make a difference. So when he got out of jail again ‘bout a year ago my mom begged me to go to school somewhere else, to get away from him.”

And Steph did. Even though it makes her feel like a coward, running away like that. That’s the worst part, the part she’s ashamed of. It’s the part that makes her hate talking about it. Her mother’s expression had been so desperate though, so hopeful, that at the time Steph couldn’t let her down by saying no.

But Steph’s decided she’s going to change all of that.

“I could have him taken care of,” Damian says. “Say the word.”

“Nah, that’s okay.” Steph shakes her head. Sorta sweet of him to offer, though. “I’ve been taking kickboxing. And a bunch of other things. I’m going to my mom’s house after the wedding and I’m going to  _make_  him promise to stay away for good.”

Damian looks unimpressed. “I was thinking something more permanent. Mother has many connections to people who can do the job. Professionals, highly skilled ones. If I call now they can have the deed done by the end of the week, completely untraceable…”

“Damian, are you talking about  _assassins_?” she asks, horrified. “Seriously? No. Oh my god, I don’t want him  _killed_.” 

_Although_ …

She mentally smacks some sense into herself. No. Definitely not.

“I understand,” he says calmly, like they’re not talking about cold-blooded murder. Something in his eyes makes her doubt his words.

“You little liar—you’re still thinking about doing it, aren’t you?” she accuses. He doesn’t disagree. “No, Damian. I mean it.  _N-O_. No. I’m not going to be a party to murder. I can take care of it myself.” 

He still doesn’t look convinced. Time for drastic measures. She holds out her pinky finger. “You know what? Pinky promise. Promise you won’t go behind my back. No killing.”

He heaves a long-suffering sigh, but offers his pinky finger to twist around hers. “Fine.”

“Say it.”

“I promise I won’t have your father killed.”

They’re shaking on it, sealing the promise, when Jason—awake for who knows how much of their conversation—sticks his head forward.

“What’s this about killing fathers?” he asks, blinking blearily. “What the hell did I _miss_?”

 

—

 

Dawn rises in bright pink and gold, and even though Steph’s been driving for hours she finally feels awake.

Jason’s still snoring in the back—he sounds so much like the rattly spoiler that Steph can’t tell them apart—and Damian finally fell asleep after his video game batteries died. Steph shoved her fuzzy blanket at him once he started nodding off, and he was so tired he wrapped himself up in it without complaint.

Steph pulls into a diner parking lot and wakes up the boys for breakfast. Damian tries the waffles and declares them more edible than the ones yesterday. He orders seconds again, clearing his plates so fast that it makes Steph feel sorry for Alfred when the kid reaches his first real growth spurt. He’ll be cooking day and night.

“We made it into the gossip rag,” says Jason, flicking through it while they finish off their coffee. They just  _had_  to buy another magazine to see if there were more hilarious articles about the wedding.

“What?” Steph yanks the magazine towards her so she and Damian can see. She only gets a split-second look at the heading picture before Damian is ripping it out of her hands so he can read it himself, but she recognizes it: outside the doors of the airport, the three of them looking stunned at the sudden camera flash. “Whoa. They work  _fast_.”

“Do they ever. Articles about who kissed who at midnight at Bruce’s New Years bashes are always out the next morning,” says Jason. “And the media knew about Cass’s tattoo before  _Bruce_  did. That’s how he found out, remember?”

“What— What is the meaning of this?” Damian splutters in outrage as he reads the article. “This is preposterous!’

He tries to close the magazine and hide it away but Jason reaches out to snatch it back. There’s a vicious tug-of-war of rustling, twisting paper that ends with Jason victorious and the back cover ripped off in the struggle, the only casualty. Damian angrily balls up that torn piece of paper in his fist as Jason reads. 

Steph slides out of her and Damian’s side of the booth to sit beside Jason and read the page over his shoulder. The article is mostly speculating about where the two Wayne boys are now and whether they’re planning on being in attendance at their brother’s wedding…

…And then it switches to speculating about  _her_. Who is she? Jason’s new girlfriend, Damian’s new nanny? A family friend? What are Jason’s feelings towards her? What about Damian—he is at that age, after all. Puppy love, perhaps?

Boring. Predictable. Really, really shallow reporting. Steph can see why Damian’s upset—crushes are a very new, very sensitive topic for thirteen-year-olds. (Especially the ones as immature as Damian, who still have one foot firmly planted in their girls-are-icky stage.)

“ _Judging by their romantic entanglements over the years, Bruce Wayne’s children have a pattern of showing interest in those slightly older than themselves,_ ” Jason quotes, looking amused and not entirely disagreeing. Damian is practically retching, making disgusted faces and trying to grab the magazine back—probably to burn it, judging by the wild, vicious glint in his eyes—only to have his hands batted away by Jason.

Steph just rolls her eyes at the whole thing. She’s long since learned not to let the tabloids bother her. There were plenty of nasty rumours and lies circulating while she was dating Tim, speculating wildly about her pregnancy and background and whether Tim had dumped her whenever he so much as hung out with another girl, even a classmate. The rumour mill had exploded when they actually did break-up. She avoided all the magazines, all the gossip shows, but it was impossible to avoid hearing what they were saying about her. 

She’s lost track of how many times Tim has apologized to her for the media’s rumours, for not being able to stop it, even though it wasn’t his fault, was  _never_  his fault.

“I’m surprised they’ve forgotten about me so soon.” She takes a sip of coffee as she wonders whether she should feel offended or relieved. Mostly she’s just numb to it all.

Jason  _hmms_  and scrutinizes the photo. “You are wearing sunglasses here. Or maybe it’s because your hair’s shorter now.”

“I had it short a few times back  _then_ , too.”

“How dare they. How  _dare_  they publish such outlandish lies!” Damian slams his fists against the table. Silverware clatters and he nearly knocks over his own orange juice. “These accusations are— are  _appalling_!”

“Yeah, it’s a bit creepy considering you’re like, four years old still,” says Jason, which only serves to make Damian angrier. “I think they’re joking about the crush—they seem more certain that me and Steph are together.” He makes a joking grimace at her. She flips him the finger in return and they both laugh. Jason holds out the magazine so Damian can see the article and points at the picture, smirking. “It does really look like you’re making moony eyes at her in the photo. What do you think?”

“A trick of the light,” Damian insists, grabbing for it again only to have Jason hold it way up out of his reach. “And of the way the camera—”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t.” Jason finally lets Damian get his hands on the magazine. He snatches it towards himself, glaring.

“Who’s the author responsible for this?” He flips through the pages with ferocity, searching. “I’ll get Father to sue them. I’ll get Mother and Father to sue the entire magazine for  _libel_ , and then—”

“Calm down, Damian,” Steph says, trying to reassure him before he works himself up so much that he explodes. “It’s total trash, all of it. We know it’s not true. Anyone who matters wouldn’t believe an article like that.“

He does end up burning the magazine. In the parking lot with Jason’s lighter, and they have to make a quick getaway because the diner’s cook comes outside and starts yelling at them. 

Steph tries not to notice that Damian has trouble looking at or talking to her for the rest of the morning.

 

—

 

“Jason, I got the candy you were talking about.” Steph pokes him on the shoulder and brandishes the bag in his face when he turns.

They stopped at a convenience store to fill up on gas and other supplies—mostly candy, and Steph made sure to pick up an entire pack of energy drinks because it’s going to be a very long day. Damian’s already waiting impatiently outside and she just found Jason lurking in a corner of the store filled with cheap, tacky souvenirs, shaking a snowglobe and peering inside it. 

“What are you looking at over here?” she asks.

“Junk.” He puts the snowglobe back on the shelf and spins a stand of keychains so they jangle. “I realized I didn’t get the happy couple a wedding present.”

“I think you just showing up is good enough. Your bright, smiling face is a present in itself.”

“Aren’t me and Damian showing up part of your wedding present?”

“We could go halfsies on it. And on the waffle maker I bought them, too.”

“…I could promise to destroy one of blackmail photos I have on Tim,” Jason says, tapping a finger against his chin thoughtfully. “I mean, I have plenty to choose from, so it’s no big loss.”

“Why don’t you just give him a hug?” Steph suggests brightly. “A big ol’ hug full of brotherly love.”

“Maybe…” he says slowly. “Or maybe I could buy them one of these keychains. You know. For their keys. Very practical.”

“I don’t see either of their names here,” says Steph, flicking through the T’s.

“There’s a  _Tom_. That’s probably close enough, right?” He spins the stand again, half-heartedly, and blows his bangs out of his eyes with a long, frustrated sigh. “I’m such a shitty brother.”

She claps him on the shoulder. “Jason, you’re far from shitty. I’ve known all of you for a long time, and I’ve never heard the others say anything like that about you, even when you’d pissed them off. Trust me.”

He’s quiet for a moment, eyebrows drawn together, thinking. “A keychain’s still a shitty present, though,” he says finally.

“Yeah. Probably. Like I said, halfsies on the waffle maker. The offer’s standing. Think about it.”

 

—

 

“You’re done? Already? Wow, you’re really good at this,” Steph tells Jason, leaning against the side of the car and watching as he puts the hubcap back on.

They blew out a tire in the middle of flipping nowhere and while Steph does know how to change them, the last time she had to it’d been an hour-long affair. Her car is finicky. If they had to rely on Steph they’d be here most of the afternoon while she fought with the stupid thing.

But Jason changes tires like he does it for a living. He’s fast.

“We all have our special talents.” Jason stands up, squinting against the sun. “Where’s the brat?”

“He’s right…” Steph turns to look through the window into the backseat, where Damian had been grumbling just a minute ago. It’s empty. “I don’t… know, actually,” she says slowly, panic starting to churn in her stomach. Shit, where’d that kid get to?

“Damian! Get away from the road!” Jason yells, startling Steph.

She whirls around to face the same direction as him and sees Damian on the other side of the highway, hunched down over something. Steph can’t believe that he got over there so  _fast_ , but then she remembers the disappearing acts he pulled when he was five. She would turn her back on him for a half a second while getting him ready for bed and he’d be gone, already looting for cookies in the kitchen.

A semi-truck comes zooming out of the tunnel just down the road. It looks like it’s far away, but Steph knows that’s just a trick of the highway. It’s close. Too close and coming too fast.

 Jason swears under his breath. Then he’s bolting forwards, sprinting across the highway toward his little brother. Directly in the path of a speeding truck that won’t be able to stop in time.

Steph loses sight of him, of both of them, as the truck screams past. Once it’s gone the boys are nowhere to be seen, nothing but whooshing air and swirling dust, and she claps both hands over her mouth in horror. For a second she fears the worst. From where she’s standing it looked like…

Then she spots them again, climbing up onto the road from the ditch Jason must have tackled Damian into, and lets out a huge sigh of relief. They’re both dirty and a little damp, but unhurt.

Jason drags Damian across the road by the collar, scolding him loudly for sneaking off, for being too close to the road, for not paying attention—”What the hell were you  _thinking_?”—while the boy struggles against his grip in embarrassed outrage and argues back.

“Was that really necessary, Todd?” Damian says scathingly as he brushes grass and dirt out of his hair. “I was at more than an adequate distance. I’m not an idiot.”

Jason just shakes his head in anger, mouthing more silent curses, and keeps yanking on his brother’s collar like he’s scruffing a kitten.

And speaking of kittens…

“Someone left her in a plastic bag by the side of the road,” Damian says in explanation of the small orange kitten tucked inside his sweater. “I’m keeping her.”

Steph cringes. She likes cats, she does… “But—”

“I’m keeping her,” insists Damian. The kitten mews as if in agreement and he strokes her head gently. “Unless you’d prefer to leave her here by the highway to perish.”

Damian looks at Steph. She looks at Jason. He’s looking at the kitten. Steph looks at the kitten (who is way too cute for Steph’s resolve) and then back at Damian, exasperatedly. 

Steph throws her hands up in the air in defeat then turns and stomps towards the car so she doesn’t have to see Damian’s smug, victorious, infuriating little  _smirk_.

An hour later the car smells like cat pee. They have to drive with the windows down until they stop somewhere that sells air freshener. After Steph empties most of a bottle the car smells like very strong, very artificial mountain air. And diluted cat pee.

 

—

 

For the past two hours they’ve been driving through patch after patch of sun showers. Buckets of rain pelting down on them from a bright sky, and Steph’s thinking about how she likes driving in the rain down an empty road like this, calm and clean and almost eerie, when Jason says, “Tell us about your speech.”

She blinks at him in confusion. “What?”

“Your wedding speech. The one you’ve been reciting under your breath all day. This is kind of a bad angle for lip-reading, but I’ve caught a few words. Seems like a hell of a speech.”

It’s true, she  _has_  been mouthing the words over and over while she’s driving, doing her best to memorize it because she doesn’t know if she’ll get much of a chance to practice later. Stupid time-suck of a road trip.

“You don’t know how to read lips,” says Steph, narrowing her eyes, sure that he’s bluffing.

“ _I_  know,” Damian boasts from the backseat. His kitten mews as though in agreement. He looks like some scheming TV villain with that cat on his lap.

“Thanks for the heads-up, Damian. Really. Now I know never to trust you if you’re in the room.”

“C’mon, I really want to hear it,” Jason urges, with something that’s almost sincerity. Almost. “Who knows if I’ll get the chance to at the actual wedding. I might bail early. Or get booted out. Just go through it once.”

“Jason, are you  _whining_?”

“Just tell us the damn speech, Brown,” demands Damian.

“Not if  _that’s_  how you’re going to ask. I need a few ‘pleases’ first.”

“ _Please_  tell us your speech,“ says Jason with a roll of his eyes, and after a minute or so of scowling and grumbling Damian finally mutters a “please” of his own.

“Well… fine. Okay. Just keep in mind that this is totally the wrong atmosphere for this speech.” A lot of the wedding audience is going to be drunk, for one thing. “…so it’s probably not going to have the same impact. The same emotional impact. And unlike you two, everyone there’s actually going to have a sense of humour, so…”

 “Quit stalling. Either say it or don’t.”

“I’m not  _stalling_ , Damian. Just give me three seconds, all right? Can you do that?“ She clears her throat and takes a deep breath. The rain’s stopped, and without it her voice sounds too loud. “The first time I met Tim—”

“Really?” Damian sneers. “You’re starting it like  _that_? Really?”

“Shut up.” This is her speech, she can begin however she likes. She clears her throat again, much more loudly, and starts over. “Right. So. The first time I met Tim, I accidentally hit him in the face with a brick—”

“I’ve never figured out how you did that by  _accident_ ,” remarks Jason idly. Steph levels him with the coldest, most murderous glare she can muster. He makes a zipping gesture across his lips. Like that’ll actually keep him from butting in again in a few seconds.

“The. First. Time,” she gets out through gritted teeth. “I met Tim. I accidentally hit him in the face. With a brick.” Right now swinging a brick at Jason and Damian’s faces sounds pretty good, too. “But he more than got back at me for that, because—and I’m sure Tam will agree with me on this—dealing with him and his family is like getting smacked in the face with an entire building…”

The boys do a spectacular job at proving her point, because it’s not ten seconds later when they interrupt her again, giving her the beginnings of a major headache and making her want to kick them out onto the side of the road. Into the muddy, rain-soggy ditch. At this rate they’ll be back in Gotham before she gets to finish.

 

—

 

“We’re in the home stretch.” Steph traces their path—what’s left—on the big wrinkled map, and it seems like so little compared to what they’ve already traveled. 

The sun is setting. They can stop at a motel and get to Gotham semi well-rested tomorrow afternoon. Or they can dose themselves with dangerous amounts of caffeine and drive all night, showing up at the manor looking and smelling like half-composted zombies at some ungodly hour of the morning.

So of course they chose the all-nighter. The sooner this ends the better.

“We’ll get there at like, three o’clock? Four?” Steph tries to calculate in her head. 

“Alfred will leave the door open for us,” says Jason. “Heck, he’ll probably be awake by then.”

They stop at a gas station to stock up on necessities. Steph eats so much candy and drinks so much soda to keep her going that she feels like her blood is fizzing in her veins from all the sugar.

Probably unhealthy.

She opens another pack of sour skittles.

The mix CD Dick made for her is finally found, unearthed from the rest the clutter in the glove compartment. She and Jason blast it and yell along to the Spice Girls and Elton John just to stay awake. And she’s surprised to find out that Jason can do a very soulful rendition of Mr Brightside.

Damian grimaces and rolls his eyes when they attempt—poorly—to hit the highest notes and have to resort to falsetto instead, but he doesn’t make a word of complaint. His silence is an amused one. It’s impossible to be unhappy about anything with a kitten purring on your lap.

With every mile that rolls by, every minute that passes, Steph feels another twist of nervousness. For the speech and for her father and for… for realizing that she and Tim aren’t kids anymore. Things that she’s been building up to for a long time, she realizes, but Gotham used to seem so far away and now everything is getting closer and sooner and she can’t shake the growing uncertainty that she isn’t ready. For any of it.

But there’s no stopping this car now.

 

—

 

Steph wakes up with city lights shining against her face.

The glowing numbers of the clock read four in the morning. Jason’s driving, Damian’s sleeping in the backseat with the kitten curled against his neck, and the good ol’ spoiler is still rattling away under the hum of some soft oldies station. 

The city looks familiar, as always. Buildings go up and down, the skyline changes, but no matter what happens, or how much time passes, Gotham can only ever be Gotham. Not necessarily pretty—could never be called pretty or nice or an easy place to live—but bright in its own way.

Steph presses a hand against the cool glass of the window. She’s not apprehensive anymore. She feels… glad. She’s home.

She falls back asleep again and doesn’t wake up until they’re pulling in through the manor gates towards the dark, unlit manor, the sky behind it just beginning to lighten.

 

—

 

The wedding was beautiful, as expected. Stunning, but surprisingly simple despite all the exaggerated media hype and Jason’s concerns. No elephants, no fire jugglers. No circus. Lots of guests, but Steph is sure that the bride and groom know every single one of them. The guest list is made up entirely of close friends and family, free of the schmoozing social climbers that like to worm their way into important events. 

The reporters are kept very much  _out_ , thankfully, though Steph saw Vicki Vale try to slip inside without an invitation… unsuccessfully. Steph didn’t hesitate to gladly—and  _loudly_ —call the woman out on it. An angry Vicki was promptly escorted outside looking like she wanted to claw Steph’s eyes out.

The music’s playing and Steph’s practically fighting her way through people in the ballroom. She finally spots Cass by one of the tall marble pillars and makes a beeline towards her, grinning widely. Even though they were both in the wedding party everything was so busy that they barely got a chance to talk so far today.

“We’ve definitely gotta dance,” says Steph, linking her arm around Cass’s. Cass points at the nearly-full champagne glass in her hand. “Once you’re done, of course.” Steph could use some, too. She manages to snag a flute off a passing server’s silver tray.

She takes a swig. The bubbles make her sneeze. “Is it true Barbara caught the bouquet?” she asks.

Cass gives that little smile of hers, the one that’s almost as good as a laugh. “She wasn’t trying to. Tam threw too hard. It went over everyone’s heads and landed on her lap.”

“Wow. Hard to argue when chance decides to go  _that_  far out of its way.”

Cass  _hmms_  in agreement and sips her champagne. “Dick was teasing her too much, so she hit him with it.”

So  _that’s_  why he had petals in his hair when Steph saw him hugging Roy Harper by the buffet earlier.

A bright camera flash takes Steph by surprise. Once she blinks the stars out of her eyes she sees Tim standing there holding a camera and smiling, his bowtie hanging half-undone around his neck in a way that would appall Alfred.

She and Cass attack him with hugs, so fiercely that he yelps and holds his camera up over his head where it’s safe from being bumped or squashed or splashed with champagne.

Tim’s brought Conner with him, and Conner asks his fellow groomsman Cass to dance.

“Go on,” Steph urges, giving her a friendly push. “I’ll find you later!”

She’s been waiting for a chance to talk alone with Tim, another person she’s barely been able to spend time with in the midst of all this wedding mayhem. Except she has to wait a bit longer, because he’s busy snapping pictures of the guests around them. He takes one of Conner and Cass together near the edge of the dance floor, and Steph smiles—they look adorable in their matching tuxes.

“So, you’re just… going around taking candids?” she asks.

More clicks. More flashes. “Exactly.”

“Isn’t that what they’re here for?“ She waves a hand toward one of the hired photographers making their rounds through the room.

“But  _they_  don’t know any of you. I do. It makes a huge difference, okay.” He fiddles with something on his camera. “Is that so weird?”

“No. God, you’re just— you’re just such a  _snob_.” She nudges him teasingly in the ribs with her elbow. “In some ways. Good ways.”

He shrugs and smiles, not necessarily disagreeing. And snaps another picture right in front of her  _face_.

Steph blinks furiously, cursing. “A little warning would be nice, before I go blind.”

“That defeats the entire purpose of candids,” he retorts loftily. She smacks him lightly on the side of his head, mussing up his hair as much as she can.

“I still can’t believe you cut your hair,” she says as he fixes it. She thought the haircut would made him look older, but if anything he looks a lot  _younger_. Which makes her feel… sad, for some reason she can’t put her finger on.

“Why’s everyone so mad at me about that? Seriously,  _everyone_  I’ve talked to has given me a hard time.” Tim waves at his friend Cassie as she walks past, and at another blonde girl Steph doesn’t know who’s being dragged to the dance floor by Cassie. “It’s not a big deal. It’s just hair. It grows back.”

She heaves a dramatic sigh. “I guess you’re right…”

Tim puts an arm around her shoulders and pulls her in close so he can take a picture of the two of them together. Several pictures in a row. Steph makes faces in most of them.

“You smell like smoke,” Steph says as they separate, wrinkling her nose. “What’s that about?”

“Oh. Um. It was Jason. He cornered me on my way to the bathroom and… hugged me. Which was nice… Just really unexpected?”

“Indeed,” she agrees, nodding her head perhaps too heartily. “Really, very unexpected.”  

Tim looks at her oddly. “Yeah.” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder. “I’m going to go get a drink and find Tam. We’ve got a few more toasts planned.”

“Go. Go be disgusting and mushy. And get drunk. I’m gonna hit the dance floor next song, right after I finish this.” She hugs him once more before he goes. “Tell Tam to save a spot on her dance card for me!” she calls after him. He waves a hand in affirmation, laughing and shaking his head. “And if you see Kara, tell her I’ve been looking for her!”

Steph spots Jason lurking by another of the pillars—at the opposite end of the ballroom from Bruce, which she doubts is a coincidence—and weaves her way towards him. He’s not drinking, she notices, but he’s got a paper plate just  _piled_  with hors d’oeuvres and she can’t resist snatching up a shrimp puff.

“Hear you took my gift suggestion,” she tells him. “Tim was happy.”

He shrugs, avoiding her eyes as he changes the subject. “Looks like you were right. The wedding’s not a screaming, fiery bloodbath. Lucky us.” He stuffs three cheesy things into his mouth and holds the plate up out of Steph’s reach when she tries to steal another snack. Jerk. “It was pretty nice,” he admits. “I saw Alfie crying a bit during the ceremony. Dabbing his eyes with his handkerchief. And Bruce’s eyes looked suspiciously damp. He was clearing his throat an awful lot.”

“Did you notice when he ‘ _sneezed_ ’ and wiped his eyes on his sleeve during the speeches?”

Jason snorts. “Which time?”

“Yeah, it’s been a really great wedding,” says Steph, smiling into her champagne glass. “So far, I mean. I guess there’s still time for everything to go wrong.” 

They both startle at the loud screams that suddenly erupt from by the buffet tables. But the screams stop almost as soon as they start, making way for raucous laughter. Tim’s friend and groomsman, Bart, had leaned too far over the table and caught his tie on fire from one of the candles. Luckily, his cousin Wally doused the flames with a pitcher of water before any damage could be done, leaving Bart sopping wet, with a singed tie, and laughing hardest of all.

“Close one,” Jason remarks. Steph hopes that’s the worst disaster they’ll see tonight.

She feels a tap on her shoulder and turns around and sees Damian standing there with his usual serious frown. He’s the only Wayne boy still wearing his tie properly.

“Stephanie,” he says, and that in itself is enough to make her eyebrows rise to her hairline. He hasn’t called her by her first name since he was  _six_. But after all the time they’ve spent together lately, everything she’s put up with, she feels she does deserve something better than last-name basis. “I wanted to ask you…”

“Yeah?”

“Do you—” is all he gets out before his voice  _cracks_. Tremendously. 

They try not to laugh. They really do. But Jason’s halfway through a sip of his drink when it happens and he chokes, dissolving into a spluttering, coughing fit of laughter. Steph hides her smile behind her hand and bites her lip until it’s nearly bleeding.

Damian just stands there, eyes wide in horror. Face burning a bright red. “I… I wanted to ask if you knew where I could find Grayson,” he says through clenched teeth, once he’s recovered enough to talk.

She and Jason both point towards the buffet tables and he stomps off, shoulders hunched miserably. Steph feels bad for him. Thirteen’s a tough age.

“So, when do you want me to fix your spoiler?” Jason asks her.

“I don’t know… I kinda like it, actually. The rattling. Adds character.” She snorts at how his face twists into a look of disbelief, almost disgust. “Kidding. I’ve got something really important to take care of tomorrow… but maybe after that?”

“Just let me know. And hey, can I hitch a ride with you on the way back?”

“What? Jason, there’s no way I’m driving tonight.” Steph swirls her champagne glass in front of his face in case he doesn’t get the idea. She was promised a ride in a limo after the party.

“Not to the  _manor_. I meant… Don’t you have to get back to school in a few days? And you’ll be driving back, right, or else leaving your car behind…“ 

Her eyes go wide in horror. “Oh,  _crap_.”


End file.
